


So Far Away

by Heliocat



Series: The Heart Of A Broken Story Series [3]
Category: Banana Fish (Anime & Manga)
Genre: 80s, Angst and Feels, Angst and Humor, Angst with a Happy Ending, Asexual Character, Asexuality, Asexuality Spectrum, Ash Lynx Goes to Japan, Ash Lynx Lives, Athletes, Brother-Sister Relationships, College, Coming Out, Coming to Terms with Loss, Crying, Depression, Eiji is good with kids, Eventual Happy Ending, Family Feels, Family Fluff, Father-Son Relationship, Feelings, Feelings Realization, Feels, Festivals, Fluff and Humor, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, Hiroshima, Homoromantic, Hospitalization, Hospitals, Humor, I Think I Might Be Gay, Injury Recovery, Is this love?, Izumo - Freeform, Japan, Japanese Culture, Letters, Light Angst, Loneliness, Loss, Loss of Parent(s), M/M, Male Friendship, Matsue, Men Crying, Minor Character Death, OTP Feels, Okumura Eiji Eventually Gets a Hug, Okumura Eiji Needs a Hug, Photography, Pining, Platonic Male/Male Relationships, Platonic Relationships, Platonic Soulmates, Recovery, References to Depression, Returning Home, Reunions, Reunited and It Feels So Good, Self-Discovery, Self-Hatred, Shame, Shunichi Ibe is a cool uncle, Shunichi Ibe is a good friend, Sibling Bonding, Sibling Love, Siblings, Survivor Guilt, Understanding, Waiting, Wakes & Funerals, mix tapes, penpals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-12
Updated: 2020-11-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:35:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 25
Words: 49,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27526993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heliocat/pseuds/Heliocat
Summary: The sister fic to 'Heart of a Broken Story', detailing what Eiji did when he returned to Japan. Mostly manga based and set in the 80s.Eiji's recovery from his bullet wound is slow but steady. As he expected, his scholarship has been rescinded, and it will take time to piece his life back together and return to some state of normality. Through it all he writes to Sing and Ash's gang in New York, but Ash himself has apparently ghosted him. He didn't realise until he went home exactly how strong his feelings for the Lynx had been... There will be further trials and tragedies for him to struggle through before he can be reunited with his soulmate again.Eventual happy ending :)
Relationships: Ash Lynx & Okumura Eiji, Ash Lynx's Gang & Okumura Eiji, Ash Lynx/Okumura Eiji, Ibe Shunichi & Okumura Eiji, Okumura Eiji & Okumura Eiji's Sister, Okumura Eiji & Original Character(s), Okumura Eiji & Sing Soo-Ling
Series: The Heart Of A Broken Story Series [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1981192
Comments: 28
Kudos: 46





	1. Take Me Home

**Author's Note:**

> The sister fic to 'Heart of a Broken Story'. As with 'Heart', I'll be uploading a few chapters a day until it's posted in its entirety, but the story is finished :) Occasionally, I reference tiny things from my other short fics (most of which I have attempted to fit into the gaps in the canon), but my primary source for canon information is the manga and, to a lesser extent, the anime. 
> 
> "So Far Away" - Dire Straits, 1985
> 
> I'm English, so British English has been used for spelling and grammar. Anything written in _italics_ are Eiji's thoughts, and he has a lot of them. Anything in **bold** are words being written or read, usually from a letter. And in a twist, anything <"like this"> indicates people are speaking in English, seeing as this is set in Japan and Japanese is the predominant language. The letters are mostly in English, however, and I feel Eiji is probably a lot better/more confident at reading/writing English than speaking it, and has access to a translation dictionary.
> 
> Many thanks to Akimi Yoshida for creating Banana Fish - this is a work of fanfiction, so I own none of the intellectual property.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The flight back to Izumo.
> 
> "Take Me Home" - Phil Collins, 1985

Eiji woke up mid-flight with the niggling sensation something somewhere was wrong. The fuselage was softly lit, encouraging people to sleep, small screens that would later show another in-flight movie currently displaying a tiny plane making its steady progress over a map indicating they were somewhere over Canada, nearly at the Pacific coast heading north-west towards Russia, maybe two or three hours into the flight. The painkillers he had taken back in New York were starting to fade, and he would have to wait a while before he could take anymore. Most of them, codeine-based capsules mainly, were illegal to take into Japan anyway, so he’d had to leave them behind until he could see a doctor back home and get a new prescription. He didn’t like taking them much anyway; they made his head fuzzy and his thoughts weird, but plain paracetamol didn’t quite cut the mustard. He’d swallowed his last couple right before boarding, hoping they would help him sleep.

Ibe-san was snoring quietly next to him, and apart from the soft drone of the engine reminding him that they were 10,000 feet in the air, everything seemed normal. The aeroplane was warmly heated, again to encourage people to snooze, but he felt cold for some reason. He shivered, wincing as the involuntary tensing of muscles aggravated his wound, sharp pain lancing his midriff. He wasn’t certain why he felt so tense, but his mind drifted to someone who meant a lot to him. He couldn’t help but think that, maybe, the feeling was linked to his situation rather than his own.

“Ash…”

He hadn’t seen him since that day in the hospital, when he had pleaded with him through tears to leave before Charlie caught him. Ash had used the word ‘sayonara’, a word well known and commonly taught but rarely used in Japan. It meant farewell, but a very specific form of farewell; it translated to ‘goodbye forever’. It’s what you say when you don’t intend seeing that person again. Sayonara was a word that severs bonds and ends relationships, but Ash wasn’t to know that. Eiji was never given chance to explain that there were other, less severe ways to say ‘bye, see you later’, like ‘mata ne’ or ‘ja ne’, which sound far friendlier and less final.

_‘I should never have taught him it…’_

His stomach ached, nagging pain clawing at his insides, and he fought the urge to cry again. He’d already sobbed into Ibe’s shoulder just as they left New York, weeping quietly until his medication kicked in and blurred his mind into a woozy blank slate. Ibe had said that Ash was the best friend he had ever made, and Eiji agreed with him. He’d never had a friend like it before, someone who trusted him so much, would share so much of themselves with him and who he wanted to stay beside no matter what. He missed him already, wondered why he never came to see him again in the hospital, why he let him leave without saying goodbye properly. Did their relationship mean less to him than it did to Eiji?

_‘No. He cares, I know he does, but he blames himself for so many things. He is worse than the Japanese in that respect. And he had already said ‘sayonara’…’_

Maybe he had read his letter by now. He hadn’t appeared at the airport, and the extra seat he had booked for him remained empty next to Ibe, but it could simply have been that he had not had chance to read it yet, that time had been too short for him to make it. Did he have a passport? Wouldn’t it have been in Dino’s care if he had? Eiji had never even considered that…

_‘Idiot…’_

Sing had said he’d delivered it though, and he trusted the young Chinese boy to be true to his word. He just hoped he had made his feelings clear enough in writing. English was difficult, and it had taken several drafts for him to write, his previous attempts screwed up in tight paper balls in a bin in the hospital, a mess of spelling errors and mistranslations.

_‘Please… Don’t let this ‘sayonara’ be forever…’_

He stared out of the window at the pink sky, the plane perpetually chasing the sunset on the horizon, trying to ignore the gnawing torture pricking at his wound.

He drifted back off to sleep without even realising it, escaping his pain and misgivings in the abyss of slumber.

***

Ibe gently shook him awake several hours later, the plane soaring over the ocean somewhere between Alaska and Tokyo, and he blearily opened his eyes to find a stewardess hovering over them.

“Meat or Fish?” she asked pleasantly, her Japanese carrying a strong American accent. Hearing his own language from someone other than Ibe was strangely jarring, a reminder that he was very nearly back in his own country after having been away for over a year.

“Whuu? Oh – sorry! Meat please,” he mumbled, rubbing grime from his eyes with his knuckle. She handed a plastic tray with a bread roll, a foil container of re-heated beef stew, a small pot of chocolate pudding and a set of plastic cutlery on it to him, Ibe taking it from her as a middle-man and pulling his lap tray down for him to rest it on while he struggled to wake up fully, fighting the last vestiges of drug-induced drowsiness.

“Sorry, Ei-chan! I didn’t want to wake you up, but you slept through the first in-flight meal and haven’t eaten a thing in almost 24 hours – you need food to keep your strength up,” Ibe said apologetically.

Eiji gave Ibe a small ‘hmm’ in agreement, letting him know that he forgave him, before turning his attention to the unappetising-looking food. He nibbled the bread and ate a couple of spoonfuls of the strangely dry stew before deeming it inedible and switching to the pudding. Wasn’t food, even usually bland and disgusting things, supposed to be tastier in the air? Everything tasted like salt and sadness. Besides, he didn’t feel hungry, and every swallow caused him pain anyway. Ibe gave him a sympathetic expression, smiling at him encouragingly.

“Just eat what you can, Ei-chan,” he said. “We’ll get something better once we land.”

Food unfinished but finished with, he pushed the tray away from him. Ibe handed it back to the stewardess when she returned for collection, giving her a small apologetic smile when she saw its mostly uneaten state, and she nodded politely in understanding. She could see just at a quick glance that the young man sitting there, pale and slightly tacky with sweat on his forehead, was in no real fit state to eat right now. Eiji had discovered, much to his umbrage, that his painkillers had now completely worn off. Every position he tried to sit in was agony, spidery tendrils of ache and discomfort weaving their way across his abdomen. He changed the position of his chair, reclining it slightly to try and find some relief, half paying attention to the in-flight movie as a distraction, half regulating his breathing in an effort to relax and stop the muscular twitches and ease the vague sense of nausea intense pain can bring on. The first port of call upon arrival back in Izumo would be the hospital, but first he had to make it through customs at Tokyo and onto a connecting flight.

It would be several hours before he would be able to see a doctor and find relief, so he grit his teeth and tried to be strong.

_‘Be like Ash…’_

They landed at Haneda, and with some difficulty he was able to hoist himself over the seats and into a chair, gasping at the pain and having to pant slightly from the effort. He and Ibe were the last off the plane, Ibe wheeling him as smoothly as he could through the airport. They had plenty of time to make the connection, but they hit a bit of a hitch when they got to customs.

Ibe had handed their passports over to the border guard, a neat and orderly middle-aged gentleman with a kindly-looking face and receding hairline under his peaked cap, who ran their names through a standard check. However, both their names flagged on the computer.

“I’d like to welcome you back to Japan, sir,” the guard had said, addressing Ibe with a serious tone, “But were you aware that the two of you overstayed your visas in America?”

“What?!” Ibe asked, surprised

“The database brought up a query when I ran your names. It says here you overstayed by at least six months.”

“T… That’s impossible! I got them extended in California, and Ash promised he’d get them sorted the second time – I’m certain of it!” Ibe stuttered nervously.

“Ibe-san? What’s going on?” Eiji asked him.

“I… I sent the paperwork while we were in California! I went through the publisher and… Oh no! I haven’t been able to contact Tadashi since then, because… Shit! What if the paperwork bounced? Or maybe something else was wrong? He wouldn’t have had an address or phone number to let us know!” Ibe muttered to himself. “And if the initial application bounced, we wouldn’t have been able to renew the second time! That would put us… yeah, that would be about seven, maybe eight months over… Did Ash even realise? He knew we were about to go over our allowed time, and he said he’d sort it, but our visas would have been the least of his problems really… especially seeing as he intended to send us home anyway… Oh, I knew I should have checked personally and not left it to a kid with too much on his plate anyway! But Max wouldn’t let me out and he had Eiji under lock and key too and…”

“Ibe-san?”

“Sir?”

“I am so sorry!” Ibe apologised to the guard. He bowed low, although really the guard was the wrong person to be apologising to. There wasn’t really a right person to direct those words to in this situation. “This was never meant to happen! I definitely tried to extend those visas! We ran into some trouble over there and I didn’t realise something went wrong with the application!”

“Ibe-san???”

“I’m sorry, Ei-chan! Oh, my God, I am so, so sorry! We may be in trouble here…” Ibe told him sheepishly.

“Sir, please stand up,” the guard said, looking a little embarrassed. “This happens more often than you’d think! We have a procedure to follow and we will need a few minutes of your time to get the ball rolling, but… you can still come home! That’s fine – we’re not going to arrest you at the gate! I’m surprised they didn’t pick up on this Stateside, to be honest.”

“It’s not the coming home that worries me, it’s the going back,” Ibe said sadly.

“Ibe-san, what is going on?” Eiji demanded to know.

“I messed up the visa extensions, Ei-chan. We were illegal aliens in the states for a few months… which means we won’t be able to go back legally for… well, it could be several years!” Ibe explained. 

“Years?” Eiji gasped. “But… I…”

“I’m sorry,” Ibe said remorsefully.

Eiji could feel his eyes stinging, threatening tears again. It seemed like nothing ever went smoothly for him where his relationship with Ash was concerned. Serendipity had brought them together, but a stream of unfortunate circumstances and incredibly bad luck kept tearing them apart. It was bad enough that Ash kept pushing him away – he’d always been able to ignore him and chase after him regardless, and had been planning to go back to New York once he’d healed sufficiently to seek him out and scold him for not coming to say goodbye properly. Now even that option had been stripped from him. What kind of horrific thing had he done in a former life to deserve this karma?

“Sir, can I just ask you to fill in this form? We’ll be in contact with more details on where you stand and what you can do to contest the decision,” the guard said, looking apologetic. People didn’t usually have a minor breakdown like this at his booth, and it was clear to him that Ibe-san had made a genuine mistake. “Sometimes they allow waivers, depending on the, err, situation around the overstay,” he added optimistically, his eyes flicking to Eiji in his chair. “You both came back of your own accord too, which works in your favour! Try not to worry too much about it.”

“I… I understand,” Ibe stuttered. He filled the forms in as quickly as he could, handing them back to the patient guard. “J…just out of curiosity, what sort of punishment are we looking at here?”

“Well, your overstay was less than a year, and it looks like you encountered some, err, extenuating circumstances…” The guard’s eyes flicked down at Eiji again before returning to Ibe. “I would say… you’re both looking at a three-year ban of entry into the States.”

“Three years?!” Eiji breathed. A lot could happen in three years.

_‘Three years before I can go back… Three years… before… Ash…”_

“I’ll contest it,” Ibe promised him. “I’ll see if I can query it – there’s bound to be a paper trail, and I’ll contact Charlie and Jenkins, see if they can help! There must be someone Stateside who can overrule this!”

“Good luck with that, sir,” the guard said, stamping the papers and handing back their passports. “For now though, welcome home!”

“Thank you,” Ibe said, bowing again before grabbing Eiji’s chair and scurrying away. Their luggage should automatically be transferred for them, so he followed the signs past duty free for internal connecting flights.

“How long until the connecting flight?” Eiji asked.

Ibe looked at his watch, frowning. “About forty minutes,” he replied. He looked at Eiji closely, taking in his unhealthy pale pallor bleaching his normal warm olive tone, noting his breathing was a little laboured even though he was sat down. “You OK, Ei-chan?”

“Painkillers wore off,” he muttered. “I’m okay.”

“You want some paracetamol?”

“It doesn’t do anything,” Eiji murmured sadly. “I just… I kinda just want to go home now.”

_‘I should have come home earlier… Should have listened to him and returned… It would have hurt so much less, and I don’t mean because I wouldn’t have been shot…’_

“Well, it won’t be long now,” Ibe said encouragingly. “Your mother should be waiting for us at the airport, and she has already made you an appointment at Izumo hospital – you’ll have more pain meds soon! You’ll feel better if they can dull the pain.”

“Yeah…”

“You’ll recover in no time, young and fit lad like you,” Ibe told him. “And don’t you worry about the visas – you leave that with me, I’ll see what I can do about it!”

“Thanks, Ibe-san.”

Boarding the final flight was harder than disembarking the previous one. By then, he was in a considerable amount of pain, whimpering as he transferred himself from his chair to his assigned seat. Thankfully, the local flight to Izumo was just over an hour long, and he spent the entire journey leaning heavily against Ibe, clutching at his wound and trying to ignore the raw soreness that now throbbed in time to his heartbeat.


	2. Mother Stands For Comfort

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eiji's Mother meets them at the airport and takes Eiji to the local hospital.
> 
> "Mother Stands For Comfort" - Kate Bush, 1985

Ibe had to physically lift him into his wheelchair at the other end, the pain had gotten so bad. He didn’t complain about it though, didn’t say a word that might make people fret and worry, but he didn’t have to say anything when his discomfort was written all over his face. Ibe asked him repeatedly while they waited for their cases if he was alright, reassuring him that he was almost home, would be able to get some pain relief soon.

His mother waited for them outside arrivals dressed in a blue floral shirt and navy pencil skirt. She had gained a little bit of weight since he’d been away, but she still had the same permed hair.

“Eiji! Oh, my goodness – my Ei-chan!” she cried out as she tottered over in heels, enveloping him in a warm but pained hug. He hissed, jostled by her embrace, grinding his teeth hard so as not to scream, knowing she meant well and craving the affection from her even if it hurt. They may have argued a lot in the past but he had missed her and, right now especially, a mother’s hug could cure many unseen ailments. He did his best to return the love, awkwardly wrapping an arm around her while she squeezed him.

“Hi Mum,” he said. “I’m home…”

“Welcome home,” she replied, finally releasing him and looking at him properly. “Are you alright, Ei-chan? You look worryingly pale.”

“His painkillers wore off a while ago,” Ibe told her. “He’ll be okay, I think. He was walking short distances just fine when we left the hospital, and the American doctors gave him the all clear to come back, but the flight was long and the faster he gets some more medication the better.”

“We better get you to the hospital then,” Okumura-san said, sounding concerned. “How on Earth did you get shot anyway, Eiji?”

“Mugger,” he lied. “Wanted my camera.”

“Idiot boy! Don’t you know you should keep your valuables hidden? Especially if you’re going to be associating with… well…”

“I’m sorry…”

“You always were reckless, even as a kid – you never registered danger until it was too late!”

“It wasn’t my fault-“

“But it could have been so easily prevented!”

“I’m sure he has learnt his lesson, Okumura-San,” Ibe assured her, going with his lie. They had all agreed that in order to keep Ash and the others out of trouble, sticking with the lie that this had been a random attack on a tourist while he just happened to be with Ash rather than a targeted personal hit was for the best. They were also going to keep as much of the last few months a secret as possible. As far as the Okumura family were concerned, Eiji was doing his job as an assistant and an undercover journalist, spending time with the teenagers he had somehow befriended in that overly affable way of his in order to get Ibe some more in-depth information of what New York street kids were like. His mother knew about Ash, for instance, and that he led a gang of youths, but did not know about Banana Fish or Dino Golzine or Yut Lung and his grudge. They claimed they had been out there longer than expected because the kids were wary of strangers, and it took considerably longer than a couple of weeks for them to start opening up and trusting them – it wasn’t entirely a lie, but for whatever reason Ash had trusted Eiji right from the off and it certainly didn’t even scratch the surface of the truth. They also claimed the publishers had allowed the extension because Ibe always procured great work through unconventional methods, and the prospect of getting an insider’s view from Eiji had intrigued them. Ibe had also informed them through a letter that he posted in Cape Cod that making friends in the States had lifted his spirits considerably, so they let him remain out there with little argument; he was technically an adult, after all, so all they could do is support his decision, even if he did then seem to vanish off the face of their world for over a year with minimal contact, only to reappear with a gunshot wound in the stomach.

“They are good people,” Eiji told her. “They might seem scary, but they’re smart and live with honour. They look out for each other.”

“They are still criminals, Eiji,” she clucked.

“Many of them don’t have a choice,” Eiji murmured, thinking of Ash. “Circumstances outside their control forced their hand. Most of them are really nice once you get to know them – I’ve made many new friends in America!”

“You would befriend a rabid dog given half the chance…”

“Not the dog’s fault it has rabies, Mum.”

“I guess,” she sighed.

“The boys Eiji was with took very good care of him,” Ibe told her. “Like he said, they are good people at heart and often don’t have a choice about their situations. There were a couple in particular he became really close to.”

“If they were taking such good care of him, then how did he get shot?” she sniffed.

“Opportunistic thieves are everywhere – they can’t protect him all the time,” Ibe said, not looking her in the eyes for fear she’d see through his lies. “They did, however, do first aid on his wound and call for the ambulance which saved his life, and some of them tried to chase down the thief.”

“America sounds highly dangerous.”

“Some parts are, yes, but Ei-chan just got unlucky. Most places are safe enough.”

“Can we… maybe… talk later?” Eiji asked quietly. “I don’t feel too great…”

“Oh! Yes, of course!” Okumura-san said, flustered. “Sorry Eiji! Let’s get you to a doctor right away!”

Ibe followed Okumura-san out to her car, parked up in the waiting area of the car park. She looked on with great concern and worry as Ibe lifted her son out of his chair and into the front passenger seat of the small Kei-car, Eiji choking back a shriek at the movement, dampening it down to a distressed whimper. It dawned on her then exactly how injured her baby boy was; Eiji was usually stoic with pain. She had seen him after he completely shattered his ankle before, wrecking the ligaments and fracturing the bone in several places, and he had barely even made a sound. Judging by the staccato panting breaths now hissing through his tightly clenched jaw, this injury was going to take a lot of rehabilitation and time to heal.

***

The doctor had been expecting his arrival and was thankfully ready to see him the moment they arrived at the hospital.

“I’ll wait out here,” Ibe said when a nurse appeared to call him through. “I’m not family, and your mother is here now.”

“Ibe-san… thanks. For everything.”

“Take care, Ei-chan. I’ll see you soon.”

Okumura-san wheeled him through, following the nurse to the doctor’s office. The American hospital had already faxed his medical record through, so they had some information to go on already. The bullet had damaged his liver and bowel, plus it had nicked his stomach and a large vein. The shot had not been perforating either, the bullet embedding itself inside his soft tissue near his ribs, requiring some tricky hours of surgery to locate and remove while repairing the penetrating damage done to his internal organs. The only thing that had saved him was the fact he was young, fit, healthy, and lucky.

“Seems you’ve been in the wars, young man,” the doctor said, regarding him with a slight smile. “Let’s just do a quick check of your current condition.”

He took his blood pressure, listened to his heart and abdomen with a stethoscope, and checked his temperature with an oral thermometer.

“Hmm… you have a slight fever,” he said, frowning. “And your blood pressure is a little low.”

He checked the bandages, only to find a red stain had started to seep through them.

“You’ll need a fresh dressing,” he commented. “I can’t be sure, but it’s possible you’ve popped a couple of stitches in transit. We’ll have a look when we take the bandage off, but I don’t think it’s anything too serious. However, looking at your condition… I think it may be wise for you to be admitted here for a couple of days observation. We don’t usually do this, but because you’re in quite a lot of pain I’m going to give you a quick injection of morphine now to get rid of it fast, then we’ll get you hooked up to an IV overnight.”

“No… I just want some oral painkiller and to go home…”

“Eiji,” his mother said in a warning tone. She shook her head. “Listen to the doctor.”

“But-“

“No buts! You were shot – you’re staying here!”

Eiji sighed, lowering his head and nodding while staring at the speckled floor. He let the doctor administer the morphine, and within moments he started to feel numb and fuzzy again. He was still in pain, but at least he didn’t care anymore.

“Please change into this,” said a nurse politely, handing him a mint green hospital gown, the johnny-type that slip over the arms and tie at the back leaving the bottom sticking out bare behind. She gave him some scrub trousers in the same shade to cover up his lower half. Pain now dulled, he was able to, with a bit of help from his mother, change out of his tracksuit bottoms and T-shirt and into the gown. The nurse then wheeled him onto a ward, into a private room, where he transferred from the chair to a bed.

“We are going to change the dressing now,” the nurse told Okumura-san. “I must politely ask you to leave while we do.”

“Okay,” she replied, sounding worried. “I’ll go and let Shunichi know what is going on. I should be getting home to check on Kaori anyway; we’ll come back later!”

“Visiting hours are-“

“Are 2-til-6, I know,” Okumura-san nodded. “My husband has been on the hepatology ward for a while now. Please, take good care of my son.”

“We will. I promise,” the nurse smiled and bowed slightly, dismissing her. She gave Eiji one final concerned glance before leaving and returning to the waiting area. The doctor appeared, closing the door behind him, and he and the nurse worked together to unwrap and scrutinise Eiji’s wound.

***

As the doctor had predicted, he had popped two external stitches, but the internal situation was unchanged. They praised the American surgeons for being able to save him, but also frowned at the messy nature of their work; Eiji was going to be left with a nasty scar once he healed. They re-stitched the broken skin, bound him with a fresh bandage, and inserted an IV into the crook of his left arm, pumping saline, precautionary antibiotics, and painkillers into him. His awareness became dazed by the new influx of drugs, and time held no meaning for him as he lay back on the pillows and floated alone on a cloud of his own imagination, his thoughts dog-legging in a decidedly strange direction.

_‘I thought polystyrene ceiling tiles were flammable… this place catches fire, we’re all going to die! Heh…’_

He drifted in and out of sleep until he was rudely awoken by a familiar voice.

“Why do they have to keep Ei-nii in? I thought he got discharged in America? You’d think they’d know tons more about gunshot wounds than our doctors do! Can’t they just give him some drugs and let him come home?”

“Kaori, the doctors know best! I’m going to go and get a coffee – just sit quietly with your brother in the meantime. I’ll be back shortly.”

“Doctors know best my ass… they haven’t been able to do much for Dad, right Ei-nii?”

Eiji opened his eyes to find his sister hovering over him, her face inches above his nose. She had grown almost half a foot since he last saw her, but like him she was still short for her age and looked younger than she was. She jumped slightly when he woke up suddenly. She’d got a light brushing of mascara on her eyelashes, Eiji finding himself mildly fascinated in the way they had clumped together, like spider legs on her eyes.

“Hi Kaori,” he murmured. “How are you?”

“Hi Kaori?” she sniffed, leaning back. “You go AWOL for a year with barely any contact, probably have a brilliant time in the States, get yourself shot, and the first thing you say when you see your little sister again is ‘Hi Kaori’. Really, Ei-nii!”

“Wha’ do you expect me to say?” he asked, his voice croaky with sleep and slurred with morphine. “’Whaddup my homie’?”

“It’s good to see you, Ei-nii,” she grinned.

“You too,” he smiled. “Although… I think it’s the drugs, but… I can see four of you.”

“How many fingers?” Kaori held up three fingers on her left hand.

“Waaaaay more than you’re supposed to have,” Eiji said, trying not to giggle.

“You’re high as a kite!”

“No, I’m not,” he lied, as the walls melted and the hands on the wall clock appeared to do a pirouette.

“I’d ask what kept you over there so long, because I don’t completely buy into the undercover work story Ibe-san told us, but I don’t think you’re in any fit state to answer right now,” she smirked.

“A who, not a what…” Eiji answered dreamily.

“So, it was a who then? Hmm… That love charm I gave you must have worked!”

“Worked like… a charm,” he giggled. “Hehe, charm!”

“I think you’ve had more than enough of the laughing juice for today, Ei-nii,” Kaori said, glancing at his IV drip. “That one was worthy of Dad in his prime!”

“Doctors know best, Kaori-chaaaaaaan!”

“Sleep it off, Ei-nii,” she said fondly. “We’ll talk more when you’re sober. I want to know all about the wonderful girl who captured your heart in the States.”

“Boy,” Eiji murmured drowsily. “He was a boy…”

“Boy?! Forget what I said about sleeping it off, Ei-nii – don’t you dare go dropping a major bombshell like that and then pass out on me! Hey!”

Eiji drifted off wearing an affectionate smile. He would talk to Kaori more when he came down from the ceiling, but for now he just wanted to sleep. He would forget most of what he just admitted when the drugs wore off too, but Kaori would definitely remember, filing it away diligently into her brain as ammunition for a later conversation.


	3. Father Figure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eiji sees his father in hospital again, and tells him all about Ash.
> 
> "Father Figure" - George Michael, 1987

The hospital kept him on high-dosage painkillers overnight, gradually weaning him off over several hours and switching him to a non-opiate, allowing him to come back to his senses the next day. Japan tended to limit the use of opiates even in a hospital, favouring giving it sparingly to people in end of life care only, so they were keen to wean him off and get him onto lower grade pain relief as fast as possible. The only reason Eiji had been given it at all is because he had already been dosed with it in the States. When he had wrecked his leg vaulting, the only thing he’d been given had been a low dose of IV paracetamol. Japan very much followed the ‘grit your teeth and put up with it’ samurai spirit when it came to pain.

Clear-headed and well rested, he felt better already. He figured the long flight, being cramped and jostled, had aggravated the wound. Being able to lie down and relax had helped immensely, but it also depressed him knowing that he would be unable to walk around very far or do much of anything for a while yet. He did have one request though, which he made to his mother when she came to see him the next day.

“I want to go and see Dad,” he said, propped up on several pillows.

“Eiji… you have only just been admitted yourself. Taking you all the way to the-“

“Stop being so overly protective,” Eiji murmured. “I’m fine now I’ve had some rest.”

“Eiji-“

“I want to see Dad,” he repeated. “Please. I don’t want to argue with you about this. I don’t want to stay cooped up in bed. I’m fine now!”

“Okay. But only if the doctor says yes!”

The doctor, to Eiji’s relief, took his side.

“Eiji is already well on the road to recovery,” he shrugged. “A long flight was a bit much for him, but just wheeling him around the hospital is fine. It’ll do him good to get out of bed – I’m hoping to send him home in a day or two, and just call him back in for rehab and check-ups. He seems to be doing exceptionally well.”

With some level of reluctance, Okumura-san watched as her highly-independent son transferred himself from bed to chair, and then she wheeled him through the halls to where his Dad now resided.

“How is he?” he asked her, as she pushed him along.

“He is… well… he’s doing as well as can be expected…”

Eiji’s father was sat up in bed reading a book when they entered his room. Eiji took in how incredibly thin and weak he looked, his skin painted with an unhealthy yellow pallor and hollowed out around his cheekbones. He looked over curiously as they entered the room, and he saw that even the whites of his eyes were a sickly lemon shade, dark marks ringing his eye sockets. He looked tired, completely devoid of any of the energetic, upbeat pep that he always used to carry. As Eiji suspected, his health had deteriorated massively during the time he had been away. He hadn’t had jaundice before, and he’d been much plumper. Clawed hands of guilt caressed his insides, reminding him that he had fled to the States with Ibe.

_‘I’m always running away…’_

“Hi Darling,” he greeted his wife with a small smile. Then he recognised his son, noticing the wheelchair and hospital gown. “Oh! Eiji? Is that you?”

“Hi Dad.”

“When did you get back? And what on Earth happened to you?”

“You didn’t tell him?” Eiji’s head whipped around to stare at his Mother accusingly.

“We didn’t see need to tell him,” she said. “You know stress makes his condition worse!”

“Tell me what?” Eiji’s father asked, frowning. “Eiji, what happened.”

“I… erm… I got shot in America.”

“What?!”

“As you can see, I survived! I’m recovering well, so you don’t need to worry about me!”

“Well, now I can’t help but worry about you! You go out into the big, wide world alone and it attempts to kill you!”

“It should be me worrying about you, Dad…”

They were silent for a moment, staring at each other with matching expressions of concern, before his Father relaxed with a slight chuckle.

“We’re two peas in a pod, aren’t we,” he said. “We always worry about others when we should probably be worried about ourselves. What am I going to do with you?”

“Cannibals would make a stew,” Eiji shrugged.

“I missed you,” his Dad said. “How was America? I expect you to tell me all about it!”

Okumura-san discretely left the room so that the two men in her life could talk. Eiji waxed lyrical about the tourist attractions Ibe had taken him to early on and how nice Charlie and Jenkins had been to them. Noticing his Mother had left, he looked around just to be certain she was gone and not listening in somewhere, before dropping his voice to a quiet murmur.

“I got caught up in some pretty heavy stuff,” he admitted. “It’s why I had to stop contacting home for a while. Ibe and I agreed to keep this quiet, but I need to tell someone – I can’t keep this to myself! I think I might explode! But you can’t tell anyone, Dad, especially not Mum – she’ll have kittens!”

His Dad mimed zipping his mouth closed and throwing away the pull tab. It was a gesture he had taught them to show that their secrets were safe. Kaori used it a lot too, and he trusted his Dad to keep quiet and not freak out and ban him from ever travelling again. Ever since he’d been little, his Dad had been his confidant and closest friend; these days, he considered Ibe to be almost as close, but Ibe wasn’t his Dad. Eiji definitely took after him more than he did his mother, his Dad having similar personality traits to him. They had the same eyes, a warm, gentle brown you could get lost in, large and with a natural tendency to make you drop your guard if you stared at them too long. He was a quietly extroverted man, accepting people and all their flaws with kindness and warmth, supportive of his family and brave in the face of adversity. He had barely batted an eyelid when the doctors made their diagnosis of his failing liver, knowing it would eventually kill him, and sooner rather than later, with a stoic acceptance. He worried more about his wife and children; how they would cope without him. Would they be able to live comfortably on the income of a single mother? The Okumura’s managed, Eiji helping out by adding his sponsorship money from his larger competitions to their income, entering every event that came along with increasing fervour.

“I figured something had happened out there,” he nodded. “It’s unlike you to go silent on us.”

“I’m sorry…”

“I’m confident you ignored us for the right reasons. I did worry, because as a parent that’s my job, but you’re an adult so… if you decide you don’t need us any more, that is your choice. I can’t stop you, and neither can your Mother, although she wishes she could. Your sister and I devised all these weird and wonderful tales of what you might be doing out there that required you to go into hiding and things. I think her best one was that you were now trafficking cocaine in Colombia for the mob and had changed your name to Juan.”

“I’ll always need you,” Eiji smiled sadly. “I didn’t mean to be gone as long as I was. I can only imagine how difficult that was for you all. And Juan? Seriously? Kaori has some really convoluted ideas!”

“She’s imaginative, that’s for sure,” his Dad laughed. “Anyway, we’re going off topic here. You were going to tell me about what you did over there. I’m getting excited just thinking about it!”

“Well, I told everyone I got shot by a mugger, yeah. But it’s not the case. I made… a good friend in America. He calls himself Ash Lynx, but it’s just a pseudonym. His real name is Aslan, which he said means ‘Dawn’. He’s smart and leads a gang of street kids in New York, but he was abused as a kid and then got himself mixed up in some really dangerous things. Ibe and I were just supposed to interview him for the article and get some photos, but things didn’t quite work out that way…”

Eiji spent the next hour telling his Dad about Banana Fish, starting with him being kidnapped along with Skipper, knowing that everything said would remain just between them, although he did choose to keep some of the more harrowing things to himself. His Mother wasn’t lying when she said stress made his Dad’s condition worse, so the parts he felt would set his nerves off the most he omitted. Besides, there were things Ibe didn’t know, and he had been there. There were also things possibly even Ash was unaware of that he would never speak of to anyone. However, whatever Ash didn’t know Sing did, so he was never completely alone with his secrets. His Dad mostly let him talk, interjecting occasionally with understanding or words of wisdom. He said that this ‘Ash’ must be an honourable person if he would willingly disarm himself to save a stranger, had praised his bravery for jumping knowing there was no crash mat and the pole could snap, and showed commiseration that Skip had died despite everything Ash and Eiji had done. He had looked surprised when Eiji said Ash had kissed him in jail.

Eiji assured him, “He just did it because he had to! He didn’t have any other options, and I really didn’t mind…”

“But wouldn’t that have been your-?”

“My first kiss? Yes… yes, it was…”

Judging by the glowing way his son was talking, he held Ash in really high regard. He told him about Griffin, and about discovering Banana Fish for the first time, but he chose not to tell him about Arthur threatening to sell him into prostitution, or how he stole Charlie’s car and went on the lamb with Ash and Shorter on a suicide mission to try and kill Golzine in revenge. He skipped straight from Griffin dying to their road trip, and spoke at length about hanging out with Ash and Shorter in Cape Cod, about how they had explored the beaches, went fishing and swimming in the lake, and climbed the trees in the fields around Ash’s hometown. He fondly remembered Ash showing him how to fire a pistol, to which his Dad had narrowed his eyes slightly, the first signs of disapproval he’d given throughout the whole conversation. His Dad went very pale and quiet as he described being kidnapped in LA, and how Shorter had met his tragic end.

“I’m so sorry, Eiji,” he had said. “But… at least you survived. And Ibe-kun too.”

“It was all my fault though,” Eiji said sadly. “I should have come home, but I got fed up of always running away…”

“It wasn’t your fault,” his Dad assured him, mirroring what everyone had been telling him but he found hard to believe.

He bent the truth about the escape from Golzine’s manor. He said the place caught fire, which was true, and he and the others escaped in the panic, which was also partly true. He did not mention Ash’s Rambo-esque murder spree. He also failed to mention the sheer number of people Ash had killed through gang violence and turf wars, most of them out of necessity or self-preservation, but he did say that he was a good leader and negotiator, that he was smart and spent a lot of time studying in the library, and that the other gangs respected him. He told his Dad about how Ash had protected him and made sure he was safe and well looked after, how they’d rented a fancy apartment and he would be accompanied by trusted people every second of the day. He explained that Ash got into a fight where he got stabbed, and everyone thought he had died – it was even on the TV! But then he returned a few weeks later with even more vigour and determination than ever, and it became apparent that the Banana Fish conspiracy was even bigger than it appeared, its roots going deep. Eiji didn’t mention being kidnapped again though. Thinking of the hatred Yut Lung had towards him just for being him turned his insides cold; he tried not to think about it too much, although it still crept into his mind with his more invasive thoughts. It was a harsh fact of life that not everyone will like you, but for most people that hatred doesn’t run deep enough to warrant them trying to eradicate you. He told his Dad that, while he had been caught up in the riots the fight created, the police released him when they realised he wasn’t a criminal or in any gangs, and that was where he met Sing Soo Ling, another really good friend.

“Seems you made a lot of friends over there,” his Dad said, smiling. “You always were popular.”

“No, I’m not,” Eiji responded, shaking his head and thinking of Yut Lung again. How he said that people either felt the urge to protect him or destroy him, with nothing in-between. “Not really.”

He mentioned how Golzine started hiring people to go up against Ash. He said he hired a professional hitman to scare him, and Ash had been forced to submit and go back into servitude. He said with pride how he, Ash’s boys, Sing and Cain had come up with a plan to rescue him, and how everything from then on got messy and confusing.

“You’re a proper little Yakuza thug, aren’t you?” his Dad laughed.

“Daaaaaaad, no! It wasn’t like that! I just wanted to return the favour – Ash was always saving me, so it was only fair I tried to do the same for him!”

He told of how Foxx had got involved, using warfare tactics on a band of teenagers. How Foxx had abused Ash and taken some of them prisoner, including Max, one of Ibe’s friends and probably the closest thing Ash had to family any more, and Kong and Bones, two young gangsters who Eiji saw as friends. He said that Ash had many enemies, and it was while they were planning how best to rescue those who were taken that some of them had seen an opportunity and tried to kill him. Eiji sadly said that was how he got shot; he’d been caught in the crossfire. They’d told everyone, even the American doctors, that he’d been attacked by a petty thief. Even Charlie and Jenkins had been told it was a mugger, so as not to get Ash in trouble when he retaliated and killed the ones who had shot him. He’d been in an American hospital for two weeks before they felt he was well enough to fly, and now here he was.

“Sounds like you’ve had a busy and exciting year,” his Dad said. “No wonder you couldn’t come home! I have to say, I don’t feel comfortable about you being around guns and violence. However, if I was in your situation… I would have done exactly the same.”

“Ash is the best friend I have ever had,” Eiji admitted. “He is nothing like how you would imagine a gangster. None of them are really.”

“No. They’re just kids,” his Dad agreed. “And this Ash sounds real special.”

“He is…”

His Dad stared at him with a strange expression, as if realising something about his son that he had suspected for several years now. Eiji had never had a girlfriend, barely showing any interest in the ladies and instead pushing himself with his pole vaulting. He’d never had any proof he was anything but straight though, because neither did Eiji show any interest in guys; he’d written him off as being a herbivore. Now here he was, talking about an American bad boy, a gleam in his eyes and his face lit up with the happiest expression he had seen on his son in many a year, and he knew that this Ash was someone very important to him. He’d decided early on that he’d support his son regardless, whatever way he swung or however he wanted to identify. He suspected their relationship wasn’t sexual, at least not yet, but Eiji definitely felt more for this boy than he had any of his other friends, male or female.

“Once you’re all healed and healthy, you should go seek him out,” his Dad smiled.

“I wish I could,” Eiji sighed. “Ibe-san told me we overstayed our visa. He’s going to see what he can do, but it is looking likely I’m going to be in Japan for a while now. Besides, I need to sort out college and stuff too. I’ve been away over a year, and it wasn’t like I was in prime shape when I left Japan either. I don’t think my scholarship still stands.”

“Probably not. You’ll have to check your letters when you finally get home – they’ve probably contacted you with your options. At least, with it being a scholarship, you haven’t wasted any money,” his Dad nodded wisely. “Are you sticking with sports, or have you changed your mind? Half of the reason you went to America in the first place was because you were considering the arts instead, and Ibe-kun thought taking you as an assistant might help you decide.”

“Yeah, I’ve decided,” Eiji told him, not meeting his eyes. His Dad had always been so proud of his sporting achievements, so he felt like he was disappointing him when he quietly admitted, “I want to do photography.”

“Well, whatever makes you happy makes me happy too,” responded his Dad. “You always did have an eye for photos anyway. And sporting careers are so short and easily ended, so you were always going to need a back-up career. I’m sure whatever you do you’ll be successful at it. You shouldn’t feel forced to do something you don’t enjoy just to keep myself and your Mum happy – we’re proud of you whatever you decide to do.”

“Thanks Dad.”

Okumura-san returned then, having walked an entire circuit of the hospital.

“Eiji, we should be getting you back to your ward now,” she said curtly. “And your father needs his rest.”

“I’m just peachy, darling,” he replied. “But yes, Eiji, she’s right. You should go back to your ward. You’ll never heal otherwise!”

“It was great to see you again, Dad,” Eiji smiled. He reached out a hand and grasped his father’s companionably. He would have hugged him if he could, but figured it would aggravate his wound, plus his father looked so frail he was afraid he may snap him, like a brittle twig.

“Come back soon, alright?” his Dad quietly replied, squeezing his hand lightly.

“I will…”


	4. Call Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eiji phones Sing from the hospital.
> 
> In a strange turn of events to my usual writing, anything written <"like this"> indicates people speaking in English.
> 
> "Call Me" - Blondie, 1980

The nurse had finally allowed him to walk around freely, provided he didn’t go too far, so he had taken his wallet and wandered down to the end of the ward where a payphone hung on the wall, a chair placed strategically next to it. Eiji fed the payphone as many 100 yen coins as he had on hand and dialled the number on the ripped piece of paper tucked inside his wallet, taking a seat on the chair while he waited for the call to connect. It was morning here, so it should be early evening over there. It rang for almost a minute before someone picked up though; a female voice with a heavy Chinese accent spoke.

<“Hallo,”> she said.

<”Oh, hello. Is this the Soo Ling’s please?”>

<”Who asking?”> Her voice carried a note of suspicion.

<”I am friend of Sing. May I speak to him?”>

<”You sound weird. You no Chinese?”>

<”No. I am Japanese.”>

<”Oh! You that Ey-Gee boy! I get Sing…”>

She moved the phone away from her mouth, but Eiji still heard the screamed Cantonese and had to move the handset from his ear lest she deafen him.

<”He come now,”> she said at a more reasonable volume. 

A few seconds later, a more familiar American voice spoke.

<”Hello?”>

<”Sing?”>

<”Who is this? Mom never said. She just screamed at me, like always.”>

<”It is me, Sing.”>

<”I dunno, stranger. ’Me’ can be a lot of people, but with that accent there’s only one guy it could be,”> You could sense his smile in his words, combined with the way he seemed to try and emulate people he admired, such as Ash and Shorter. <”You got home alright then, Eiji?”>

<”I am back in Izumo at least,”> he said. <”But I ended up in hospital again for a few days.”>

<”Oh – bummer!”> said Sing sympathetically. <”You did get shot in a nasty spot though. Did the flight aggravate it or sommat? You couldn’t take those drugs back with you, could you?”>

<”Doctor say I am doing well. I should be out in a few days. Then they will start recovery physio.”>

<”That’s good at least.”>

<”How is everyone in America?”>

Sing paused for a second before saying, <”They’re doing great, Eiji. With Golzine out of the picture, Ash’s boys have been able to relax and kick back a bit more, and I managed to patch things up with the animosity between us, so everyone is back on good terms like before. They miss you though. All of us do! How about you, apart from being in hospital still? I bet it was nice to see your family again.”>

<”Mum shout at me minute I get off aeroplane,”> he grumbled. <”I in chair, cannot walk well, in pain. Not my fault I get shot, but she call me reckless! She seem to think America full of thugs. Ibe-san put in good word for everyone.”>

<”Hah, mothers eh?”>

<”Yes… she always worry. My sister make fun of me on morphine too. She horrible girl! You better off without sister, Sing! Having brother probably easier.”>

<”Maybe for some people, but Lao was… difficult.”> Something in his voice sounded off. Eiji didn’t push with questions though. His yen was rapidly running out. He would ask Sing more about it in his first letter.

<”I have to go. Phone to America expensive and I am out of coin,”> he explained apologetically, hearing the phone beep at him reminding him he was running low on funds. <”I write letter soon – tell you more then!”>

<”Alright, Eiji – it was great hearing from you anyway. Good to hear you got home safely – I’ll tell the others. Hope you get out of the hospital for good soon!”>

<”Me too. Take care Sing!”>

<”Bye!”>

The phone cut off before he had chance to hang up, but at least they had managed to say goodbye.


	5. Our House

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eiji finally goes home, and there's a surprise waiting for him in his luggage from the States.
> 
> "Our House" - Madness, 1982

He was in hospital for five days before the doctor saw fit to discharge him. He would have to return for physio sessions twice a week for the next couple of months to build strength back in his core, and every week for the following month the doctor wanted to personally check his stitches and healing progress. He was doing well, though, healing fast and recovering nicely. The Americans had said the same thing.

Ibe had briefly visited on his third day, bringing him a melon and explaining that he was heading back home himself the next day. Eiji knew he’d be back visiting them again before too long; every time his work brought him to West Honshu, you could bet your bottom dollar he would drop in for a visit. If he didn’t come to Shimane, Eiji would go to him once he’d recovered and if he had time. He enjoyed visiting his installations whenever he had gallery space, and before America he had volunteered as his assistant multiple times. Technically, while he was still majoring in Sports Science before he went to the States, after his catastrophic ankle injury he had spent more and more time pursuing photography instead. Ibe was keen for him to get back out on the track, wanted badly to see Eiji jump again, but he also never stopped him from tagging along, helping out, learning from him about focus, exposure times, ISO and FPS. It didn’t escape Ibe’s notice that the only time he seemed happy following his accident was when he had a camera in his hands, but it was a strangely wistful happiness, like this was what he really wanted to do but something was holding him back. It was one of many reasons that he had invited him to America with him, hoping maybe Eiji could find some enlightenment there and would cheer up out of his depressive slump.

Ibe had been right. He had changed as a person out there and found himself a new path to follow. It was a difficult path, unpaved and strewn with thorns, but it was exciting and better things waited for him at the end of it. 

His mother had picked him up at the hospital after work, and for the first time in over a year he returned home, watching the familiar roads and buildings flash by outside the car windows. This was the city he had grown up in, a city he knew well and understood intimately.

_‘Izumo is to me what New York became for Ash…’_

His house looked the same always, the same colourful rhododendrons in the front garden, the same name plaque on the wall, the same entryway with the large porch overhang, the balcony accessible from his sister and mother’s room above. He walked down the garden path, waving his mother’s concerns away.

“I’m alright! I’m injured, but I’m not an invalid! I can walk by myself over short distances – the doctor said I need to try and walk more!”

The house even smelled the same as he remembered it, that clean Japanese combination of grass matting and cedarwood. The familiarity brought him a lot of comfort. He kicked off his shoes at the door, his old slippers still waiting for him on the shoe-rack, Norinori embroidered colourfully on the fluffy mules. His feet slid into them, toes merrily greeting the warmth and the flattened pressure outline of his soles in the padding like old friends. He rubbed a hand over the wooden support beam for the entryway, caressing the knots and natural bumps in the smooth wood.

“I’m home,” he said quietly.

“Welcome back,” his mother replied behind him. “C’mon, I’ll make us a drink. I want to hear more about America! Would you like tea or coffee?”

“I kinda just… want to go rest in my room for a bit,” he said quietly, averting his eyes from her. “Sorry.”

“What are you apologising for?” she frowned. “You need all the rest you can get! We can talk any time. Can you handle the stairs?”

“I was handling stairs just fine in the American hospital,” he told her.

“I’ll call you down later when dinner is ready then,” she said, smiling slightly and leaving him alone.

He had been lying about stairs, but that didn’t stop him ascending them. The action of climbing tugged a little at his wound, but it wasn’t as bad as he feared it would be. He’d have to get used to it anyway, because the bathroom was downstairs. He shuffled to the closed door at the end of the landing, took a deep breath, and let himself in to his old room.

It was exactly as he had left it. Either his mother or sister had been in periodically to keep on top of the dust and water his spider plant on the window sill, but everything else was where he left it. His many trophies occupied a couple of shelves on the wall, photos of his old school friends and track team sparsely decorated a pinboard over his desk, and the framed poster of Ibe’s best photo of him showed him off in a graceful light that he never could quite emulate on the ground.

Waiting in his room, stood on the floor by his desk, was his luggage from America, still unopened. Ibe had been back to the apartment he had shared with Ash and, with the help of Bones and Kong, had gathered his things together. He figured it would just be clothing and maybe a few toiletries folded inside. He winced as he lay the suitcase down, the weight catching him by surprise. He wasn’t really supposed to lift heavy things yet, but he figured just moving a case from upright to horizontal without it ever leaving the floor barely classed as ‘lifting’. He unbuckled the two straps on the case and flipped the lid open, not expecting anything special within.

He was pleasantly surprised when a stuffed animal stared back at him, slightly wall-eyed shiny plastic eyes regarding him with from within the rumpled clothes.

It was the stuffed toy Ash had won him in the arcade. Strangely enough, whether through fate or fortune, the toy he had snagged in the claw crane from the variety of realistic animals squished into the prize vault had been a lynx. Ash, embarrassed, would claim repeatedly it was a bobcat and not a lynx, but a quick look in a library book revealed that a bobcat was, in fact, a small type of lynx anyway. He’d called it ‘Aslan’ just to annoy him, and it had sat on a shelf in the bedroom observing them with a friendly thread smile. It was likely either Kong or Bones had pulled it down from its lofty perch, recognising it as being something their boss would not covet, and had shoved it in the case with his other things.

He pulled it from the case, fluffing the fur up again from where it had been ruffled and squashed in transit, then sat on his bed and hugged it tightly.

_‘I won’t cry… I won’t…’_

Silent tears still came anyway.

He sat holding the toy for a long while waiting for his emotions to settle again so he could continue putting his things away. Once he felt more stable, he placed the lynx on the pillow at the head of his bed, its new home for the foreseeable future.

He removed the clothes from the case. Ibe had packed the dirty ones into a pillowcase to keep them separate; he would add them to the family laundry in the bathroom later, but for now he placed the pillowcase by the door. The clean items he hung one by one back in his wardrobe. Somehow, the bomber jacket he often borrowed from Ash had made its way into the mix. He must have worn it so often that they had assumed it was his – he just hoped Ash wouldn’t miss it too badly. He’d probably just assume it had gotten lost somewhere in one of his many house-moves. He also noticed he was missing a blue dress shirt, plus one of his old Norinori T-shirts, a baggy green one with Norinori printed on the back that Ash had been known to steal after a shower, was absent as well. Never mind. Dress shirts were easy to replace, and the Norinori shirt had been a couple of sizes too large for him anyway. He’d used it as loungewear, had taken it to America purely to slob around hotel rooms in, but it had fit Ash perfectly. Everything seemed to fit Ash perfectly – he was like a damn clothes horse! Unlike Eiji, who had to roll the legs up on most of his trousers, and who sometimes still fit the larger kid’s sizes.

_‘Hardly a fair trade, an old T-shirt for a designer jacket…’_

Under the clothes and toiletries, he found a small shoebox. Inside the shoebox were several rolls of film, numerous rows of negatives, plus a decent number of photos he had developed cramped up in the makeshift cupboard darkroom in the apartment. He flicked through images of the boys in the gang and scenery photos of New York. The photos he had taken prior to LA had been lost. This included the photos of he and Ibe on the tourist trail while Ash was in jail, plus their roadtrip photos, but Ibe had sent several reels of films home before they were captured. He had the good habit of posting things back to Japan as they went along, so it was likely he had copies Eiji could ask for once he had chance to look through his post box in Sendai. There were, however, several of just Ash doing Ash things around the apartment, looking vulnerable and very human with his guard lowered. Eiji, like Ibe, had developed a habit for taking candid photos. After the first few, Ash had just toned him out and let him do what he wanted with a camera. Thus he had photos of Ash in bed, sleepy and dazed, eating Japanese food awkwardly with chopsticks and attempting to help with the chores (and failing – he wasn’t the most domestic of creatures, although he was very fastidious when it came to keeping himself clean), several of him lazing around the apartment, looking studious and serious, plus some of him in partial states of undress (he’d taken those just to annoy him – he’d stopped when he saw it was making Ash uncomfortable, although Ash then said ‘if it’s you, I don’t mind’). He had more on his latest camera reel; he knew for a fact he had a couple of Sing on there, plus Max and Charlie, as well as the last photo he ever took of Ash before he ended up hospitalised, of him attempting to learn some Japanese, frowning at a sheet of paper Eiji had written some basic phrases on, a mug of what could dubiously be called coffee going rapidly cold in a chipped mug in his hand. He would get them developed ASAP, but for now he picked out his favourites from the pile and pinned them up on the board with his existing photos of old friends and close family.


	6. I Wrote A Letter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eiji writes his first letter to Sing, as promised. 
> 
> "I Wrote A Letter" - Tina Turner, 1984

Over the next couple of days, Eiji went through his post backlog. As his Dad has suspected, his college had contacted him several times, firstly informing him that he would likely fail the year if he missed any more classes, then to tell him that he would need to retake his sophomore year if he returned, and finally to tell him they had rescinded his scholarship so when he returned he would need to pay tuition. He had phoned the listed number, and explained to the bored sounding lady on the other end that he was sorry he hadn’t contacted them sooner, that he had been abroad the last year, and that he would be quitting his Sports Science degree course effective immediately. They voiced very little remorse at him leaving, a shrug evidenced in their dull tone. He had then asked if they could send him a prospectus for their arts courses. Once he got off the phone with them, he spent a couple of hours writing requests for prospectus from other colleges, so as to browse his options. Ibe had given him a list of colleges across Japan with a good arts department, and he fired off letters to those within a 2-hour train journey of home. Over the next few weeks, he should hopefully receive several glossy pamphlets full of pictures of students with false smiles, in-depth descriptions of the courses on offer and the facilities on site that he could peruse at his leisure.

Once he had finished his life chore of the day, he wrote his first letter to America.

**‘Dear Sing,**

**I promised I would write when I called you, so here I am!**

**As I said over the phone, I got re-hospitalised in Izumo. I ripped a couple of stitches during the flight, and spending 14 hours travelling exhausted me. They put me back on morphine for a day, which is almost unheard of here, but I perked up again quickly and am well on the mend now. I see my physio next week and the wound is healing well. I am now back home and I forgot how much I missed my own bed!**

**One good thing about being in the hospital was I got to spend a lot of time with my Dad. He has been a resident patient there for a good three years now with chronic liver disease, and after being away for a year it was nice to spend time with him. He is a kind man, and he wanted to hear all about America. He is the only person apart from Ibe-san I can tell in Japan honestly about what happened – he will keep quiet. He is trustworthy. I have cool Dad! I would tell my sister, but I cannot promise she won’t go and tell Mum what I got up to, and if Mum finds out she will be angry and disappointed. As you know, Asian parental disappointment is the worst! Dad said you sounded like a great person and he would love to meet you. I also told him about Ash. How is he doing? I have heard nothing from him.’**

He spent a couple of paragraphs detailing how his Mum was fussing over him like a mother hen, and how his sister was already bullying him. He described the things in his house which were new, like the kitchen which had been remodelled, and the things which hadn’t changed, like his bedroom. He praised the taste of the new harvest rice which had just come into season. He asked Sing if the Chinese celebrated the rice harvest as much as the Japanese did, seeing as it was a shared staple food, and asked whether he got chance to eat it in the States or not. Finally, he told him about his college applications.

**‘I have dropped out of my old college course. I did sports science. I don’t think I ever told you – Ash and Shorter knew, but I was a track-and-field athlete and used to be a professional pole-vaulter. I had a scholarship at a college with a great sports program. I competed one year in the Asian Athletic Championships representing Japan when I was seventeen. I got to go to Kuwait for a week. Maybe you saw me on TV? I’m not sure if it got televised in the States. I didn’t do very well – I came 21 th place, but it was still exciting! I was due to start World Championships, along with my main rival, Mizuno Kazuhiko, of Kagawa Prefecture. I always came second best to him at meets – he was taller and able to get more height than me. I reached the peak of my ability just before I got injured at college in 1984. I fluffed a jump and missed the mat. I shattered my ankle and it’s never been right since, so I couldn’t jump professionally any more. Now, with this new injury, it’s looking likely I’ll never be able to safely jump again.**

**That’s alright though. I have given up being a pro-athlete anyway. I prefer photography, so I’m looking to study that now. I’m restarting my degree and changing my major next year – I want to take a year off to earn some money and just take a bit of a break.’**

He finished his letter with some generic goodwill descriptions of how his neighbour’s garden was flowering late into the season, and that he had missed the familiar sound of Japanese songbirds, who’s soothing melodies contrasted with the harshness of car horns, sirens, and shouting that New York often sang with.

**‘Oh, I got my final reel of film processed at the one-hour photoshop in Izumo – here’s a copy of the picture we took of each other in the hospital before I left! It came out really well!**

**I hope to hear back from you and the others in New York soon.**

**Take care,**

**Your friend.**

**Eiji’**

He folded the letter twice, tucked the selfie of himself and Sing inside (he’d gotten two copies, the other of which was already on his noticeboard – his mother had taken him in his wheelchair into Izumo centre so he could get them developed and so he could pick up a few other bits, as well as so he could see an optician to get a new contact lens prescription and some glasses) and stuffed the bundle into an envelope. He’d stored the torn paper with Sing’s address on it tucked inside a notebook in the drawer of his desk. He retrieved it, and copied it onto the envelope. Finally, he licked along the envelope glue edge to moisten it, pressed it closed, and made sure it was fully sealed by peeling a Norinori sticker off a sheet (he’d brought them in a Tokyu Hands before he went to America) and sticking it on the envelope point to secure it. He would need to take it to a post office, or get his Mum or sister to go in his stead, to buy an airmail stamp.

He hoped Sing would reply soon.


	7. Sister Christian

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eiji's sister leaves Eiji with several questions about himself he'd never considered before. Also, I break the 4th wall. 
> 
> "Sister Christian" - Night Ranger, 1983

“Ei-chan, could you take these up to your sister please?” His Mum held out a pile of clean laundry. “There’s a shirt of yours on the top too.”

“Sure,” Eiji nodded, holding out his arms to accept the clothes. He’d been home for a week now and was getting back into the swing of home life, finding his new place in the domestic setting. Things had been a little awkward for Eiji if he was honest; he’d been away for so long, he needed to find his niche again, and communication still a tiny bit stilted and awkward between him and his mother and sister. They were improving rapidly though, especially with Kaori who had settled right back into her old routine of teasing him and being generally annoying. When it came to housework, he still couldn’t do much with his wound. The doctors had advised against heavy lifting or strenuous exercise for another month or more, but he could still cook and do simple chores. Already he’d taken charge of breakfast for himself and Kaori so his Mother could shoot off to work, and while he couldn’t carry a heavy shop back from the market yet, he could nip to the 7-11 for a pint of milk or a bottle of soy sauce, and he could drop letters into a post box to get some light walking in like the doctor had recommended. For longer distances or time out of the house, he used his wheelchair. He was getting pretty good at wheeling himself around now, although usually his Mum or Kaori would push him.

“It’s not too much for you, is it?” his Mum fussed. “I can take them if it hurts you too much?”

“Mum, I’m fine! They’re not heavy – I can manage!” He walked away before she could say any more or take the clothes off him, trying not to stagger on the stairs as he filled himself with male pride.

_‘It doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t- ow! – hurt!’_

He dropped the shirt of his off in his own room before knocking on the door to his sister’s room.

“Kaori – Mum sent me up with laundry,” he shouted through the wood. “Can I come in?”

“Sure – I’m decent!”

_‘It’s one in the afternoon – I should hope you are, stupid sister…’_

He pushed open the door and stepped inside. His sister was laying on her stomach on her bed, listening to some music on a Walkman and writing something in a spiral-bound notebook – it looked like Geography homework, judging from the diagram of a glacier she had roughly sketched on the page. Eiji dumped the pile of folded clothes on the small of her back.

“Thanks Ei-nii.”

His sister’s room had the same furniture and layout as his did, the same wardrobe with the double drawers underneath, the same desk and office chair, the same bookcase and the same western-style bed, only her bedding was lilac and her walls a sunny yellow. She also had a windowed door leading out to the balcony, currently ajar to allow a cool breeze in, whereas he only had a window overlooking the back garden. An explosion of throw pillows decorated her bed, padding the edge nearest the wall, as well as a large pink rabbit stuffed animal and a smaller teddy bear keeping sentry down the foot-end. Instead of the ratty old turquoise rug he had, she had two sheepskin sewn together into a soft, fluffy runner, and rather than trophies on her shelves she had several stuffed toys. She had posters on her walls for films and popular bands, so many that barely any of the yellow paint showed through; there was a Lost Boys poster, a Star Wars one, an Akira one, a Night on the Galactic Railroad one, and a Castle in the Sky one. His sister had an eclectic taste in movies for a girl, he thought. Music-wise she had a small poster of David Bowie, and two large ones of Japanese boy bands featuring the boys from Ninja and the boys from Genji. Her bookcase held shojo mangas and a selection of YA literature, and her noticeboard had less photos on it than his; the ones she did have were mainly of her and Hiyoko visiting places together, plus several strips of purikura photo booth images of them both. She had a smattering of herself with Eiji when they were younger, plus a few of just Eiji competing at meets, and the same selection of holiday photos and pictures of their parents and other family they both had in common that he also had copies of on his board. The remaining space on the noticeboard was taken up by pictures of cute animals, a large calendar with cat pictures on it, and two glossy photos she’d clipped from American magazines. One was Tom Cruise in his Top Gun flight suit. Kaori had liked Tom Cruise ever since she and Hiyori had borrowed a VCR of Japanese-dubbed ‘Risky Business’ from a friend at school and watched it secretly back when she was 13. Had their mother known the film was R-rated, she would have prevented her seeing it, but Auntie Sakura was less strict and they’d watched it around Hiyoko’s. She’d been enamoured with the American actor since then.

The second magazine clipping he did an actual double take with.

An attractive teenager in a cord jacket and white T-shirt with waved blonde hair and an intense stare held a guitar as he peered at the camera with a serious expression.

_‘He looks just like Ash…’_

On closer examination of the magazine clipping, the caption printed on the bottom of the photo in English revealed the heartthrob to be up-and-coming American actor and musician River Phoenix. The photo was black and white, so at first glance it had been difficult to tell, but the actor had darker grey-blue eyes and his hair was more of a dirty-blonde shade, unlike Ash who was platinum. However, they were so similar they could have easily been paternal twins or body doubles.

“He’s dreamy, isn’t he?” Kaori had seen him staring at the picture. “I saw that in Vogue and just fell into his eyes!”

“I guess…” Eiji murmured, looking away and feeling a little bit uncomfortable. There were definitely some uncanny valley shenanigans going on here, but they do say everyone has a doppelganger. Some people said he looked just like Hironobu Nomura, but he couldn’t see it himself. Nomura was a heartthrob, much beloved by teenage girls up and down Japan for his casual cuteness. When he looked in the mirror, all he saw was plain Eiji, nothing special to look at, the typical Japanese everyman with stupid big doe eyes that made him look like a child.

“I still prefer my Mr. Cruise though,” she said cheekily. “Off-centre teeth and all! I hope one day someone like Tom will come and sweep me off my feet – like that scene at the end of ‘Officer and a Gentleman’, where Richard Gere strides into the factory and bridal carries Debra Winger away, only with me and Tom Cruise.”

“I somehow can’t see that happening,” Eiji said, smiling. “You need to set a more realistic relationship goal.”

“Like you and your New York boyfriend?”

“Huh?”

“Ei-nii, you are hilarious on drugs,” she smirked. “The things you say – better yet, the things you a _dmit!”_

“Kaori… what are you talking about?”

“I know you’re gay, Ei-nii.”

“I… I’m not… I’m not… gay… Kaori…”

“That’s not what you said in the hospital,” she said in a sing-song voice, smiling ever broader, her face altering from cheeky to demonic. “So, who was it? One of your gangster friends?”

“Y…you have it all wrong!”

“Methinks the boy doth protest too much!”

“Kaori, whatever I said while high on morphine was likely a lie! I go really screwy on the hard painkillers… In the States, Ibe told me that while I was drugged up, I claimed I was President Reagan and demanded to see George Bush to discuss my plans for the US constitution, which included free chocolate fountains for all and making manga a compulsory subject in American high schools. I also apparently told one of the nurses I was Charles Dickens in a former life and attempted to sing country songs backwards in Japanese. I promise you, I only made friends in America! No boyfriends, girlfriends, or anything inbetween!”

“A likely story,” she sighed. “Just so you know, I don’t care if you’re gay, straight, or whatever. I just want you to be happy.”

“I was probably thinking about Ash though…”

“Ash?”

“A boy I met out there. He leads the gang Ibe and I were interviewing, and we became really good friends. Just friends!” he said firmly, seeing her expression. “But, best friends maybe? I don’t know. He trusted me, which from him means a lot because he doesn’t trust hardly anyone. I learnt a lot about him and, despite people calling him a devil or a wild animal, he’s actually a really nice guy.”

“A nice guy, huh?” Kaori said, looking interested. She edged closer to him, eyes sparkling. “What’s he look like?”

“Erm…” Eiji’s eyes automatically flicked to the picture of River Phoenix and back again. “He’s blonde; a really light, pale blonde, like a harvest moon, with pale skin to match. It’s really soft too, like a cat. And his eyes are bright green, like emeralds, and super intense – if looks could kill, he’d likely shoot lasers from them! He can silence people with just a glance. Thinking of that, he’s damn scary with a gun; he has the vision and accuracy of a hawk! He’s thin - probably too thin, really, but he’s nimble and strong. Not like an athlete, more like… a dancer? And he looks good in everything but he nearly always wears denim that’s a couple of sizes too big for him. He’s about 18 months younger than me, but he acts older, and he’s super intelligent – he reads scientific journals for fun! He spends so long in the library he’s started to smell like one…”

“Hmm…” Kaori narrowed her eyes slightly. She’d been expecting something generic, like ‘he’s eighteen years old, blonde hair, white American, just another guy’. Eiji had given her a poetic description worthy of a love sonnet, and he became very animated while speaking, more so than she’d really seen him before when talking about another person, like he was excited or proud. She didn’t say anything though; clearly, her brother was still living in denial. It’s quite possible he himself didn’t recognise his emotions as being more than just that between close friends. He’d never really mentioned having a crush in the past before, female or male.

“We left on kinda negative terms though,” Eiji sighed. “It’s not that either of us did anything wrong, but I think he feels really guilty about what happened and he shouldn’t. I think he was avoiding me at the end. I wrote him a letter to say goodbye because he never showed up, but…”

“So you never got a goodbye in return? No closure?”

“That’s the thing, Kaori. I did.”

“But you just said he never-“

“He said ‘sayonara’ when I last saw him.”

“Ouch!”

“Yeah…”

“But foreigners rarely ever get the meaning of that word. They just learn it the same way they learn ‘this is a pen’,” Kaori shrugged. “If you were that close as… friends… I doubt he meant it as ‘goodbye forever’.”

“Yeah, true…” Eiji said dubiously. With Ash, it was difficult to tell what his intentions were. He flopped so often between needy clinginess and pushing Eiji as far away as he could, and he had said several times it would be better if people stayed away from him for their own good. It would upset him greatly, but he wouldn’t be surprised if Ash did decide to just ghost him. “I guess I just wait and see if he contacts me at all. I left him my address, and I have other American friends who I’ve already spoken to since coming back.”

“I think he may surprise you,” she said, turning her attention back to her homework. “One day, when you least expect it. Bam! More Ash than you can possibly handle!”

“Do you have to word it so seedily?”

She shrugged, waving him away. He left her to her geography, but her words had given him something to think about.

_‘I’m not gay… am I?’_

He’d never really considered it before, but neither had he met someone like Ash before. Maybe his type was just really specific, or circumstances in their friendship had allowed those feelings to grow. Towards the end of his time there, Ash had started to become very tactile with him, not to the extent they were touchy-feely and all over each other all the time, but he would willingly let Eiji hug him when he was anxious or depressed and he clearly enjoyed being close to him, shoulders touching when they were next to each other, or hands lingering just a little longer than usual when they handed each other something. He couldn’t deny that he thought about the blonde American a lot. He was fond of him and he worried about him. He desperately wanted to see him again, or to at least hear his voice or read his words. He missed spending time with him, but he was missing everyone in America, so maybe it was just some weird reverse homesickness. But… he did seem to find his thoughts wandering to Ash most of all, and he found himself feeling sad that he couldn’t be with him.

He’d always thought he was straight, but now had no idea what he was.

_‘I’m straight… I have to be, right? We’re friends! That’s all.’_

He would ponder those thoughts alone several times over the coming weeks.


	8. A Country Boy Can Survive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eiji hears about what happened to Ash from Ibe. Kaori comforts him when he blames himself.
> 
> "A Country Boy Can Survive" - Hank Williams Jr., 1981

A package from Ibe arrived in the mail, the postman knocking to deliver it as the beefy jiffy-packed parcel wouldn’t quite fit through the letterbox. Eiji opened it in his room, a wad of photos spilling out onto his desk together with a short letter. A shuffle through the photos revealed them to be Ibe’s tourist photos of them both exploring New York, plus the Cape Cod - California road trip snaps of them all enjoying themselves. He’d clearly been to his mailbox and was back in Sendai. Eiji was glad Ibe was so meticulous and thought ahead – posting the reels home at regular intervals had saved a lot of memories that would have otherwise been lost. He picked out the best ones for his noticeboard; a couple of Shorter, several of Ash, and some of him and Ibe exploring the city, one of them on the Circle Line ferry in front of the Statue of Liberty, one of them on top of the Empire State, and one of Eiji inside Grand Central Station holding his arms wide and smiling broadly as New Yorkers scuttled around him. His favourite from the entire pile of pictures Ibe had sent was one of himself, Ash, and Shorter in the middle with his arms thrown over their shoulders, all three of them holding up V-signs with both hands. Ash looked incredibly awkward, an odd happy-embarrassed crooked smile and a slight blush visible over his cheeks, while Shorter had a huge grin. All three of them look a bit dishevelled from where they’d been running around on a beach at the Cape, T-shirts splattered with sea water and sand, hair windswept and kissed with salt air, erasing the effortlessly perfectly groomed vibe his two American friends seemed to have otherwise.

The letter Ibe had supplied was short and to the point.

**‘Eiji,**

**Hope you like the photos! I’m glad I had the foresight to send them home as we went!**

**Can you give me a call at your earliest convenience?**

**Ibe’**

He went downstairs to the telephone, figuring it would be alright to give Ibe a call now. It was a Saturday, and they had weekend rates, so the telephone bill should be lower. Kaori was in town with some friends and his mother was working an extra shift, so he was alone – if Ibe wished to discuss Banana Fish then it was as good a time as any. He picked up the handset. Ibe’s number was written on a quick-dial sheet of paper next to the phone, and he keyed in the digits on the rotary phone, fingers sliding around for each individual number, the dial slowly clicking back around. When he got a dial tone, he sat himself down cross-legged on the smooth hardwood floor, back leaning against the leg of the telephone table while he waited for Ibe to answer.

It took him a while. Eiji was about to hang up when he answered.

“Hello?”

“Ibe-san?”

“Ei-chan? That you?”

“It’s me Ibe-san. I got your photos – thank you! They’re brilliant!”

“Oh, you’re welcome! I thought you might like them! You must be out of the hospital by now?”

“Yeah, I got discharged over a week ago. The doctors say I’m doing really well!”

“That’s good to hear – I was really worried with how pale you looked after the flight back!”

“Sorry to scare you.”

“At least you’re well on the road to recovery… any chance of you returning to athletics?”

“Afraid not. That ship has well and truly sailed. Doctor says it would be too risky for me to even attempt to vault now. I’m really out of practice too, so I doubt I’d be able to get back to the level I was at before.”

“Shame – you were really good!”

“I wasn’t… not really.”

“I thought you were anyway.”

“Hehe, you would say that – I got you your big break!”

“True.”

“Speaking of which, I’ve been looking at some of those colleges you recommended. I dunno if maybe you could come help me choose sometime? They’ll have open days and things where I can go look around. Mum won’t be able to go to most of them because of work, and Kaori is busy with school and her own future, plus you studied art yourself, so you probably know more about what makes a good or a bad course. I’d like the support if you’re free and can afford it…”

“Ei-chan, I’d love to! You’re set on photography now then?”

“Yeah.”

“You are pretty talented with a viewfinder…”

There was a little bit of a pause, Eiji hesitating to ask about the letter.

“You asked me to phone you ASAP in your letter…”

“Oh. Yes. That.”

“Is this about the visas?”

“Huh? Oh, no, I’m still waiting to hear more about them. I’ve been in contact with immigrations and we have a reference number now, but it’s going to take a little while to push an appeal through. I’ll keep you updated with that as and when things change. I may need signatures from you at some point, or more information for their records.”

“Then…”

“I called Max.”

“Yeah…”

“Mainly it was to tell him I was safely back in Japan. I was still in Tokyo – I only got back to Sendai three days ago, and the first thing I did was sort out those photos. I spent a little extra to get them to you on overnight shipping – I wanted to cheer you up! I’m sorry I haven’t been in contact since leaving Izumo - I had to go and see my editor in Tokyo and it’s been super busy here and-“

“Ibe-san!”

“Oh yeah – Max! Ei-chan, I don’t know any easy way to say this, so I’m just going to come out and say it. Ash didn’t come to the airport to say goodbye because he got stabbed.”

“What…?”

“He was found in the library and he got taken into hospital. Max said he did try to come and say goodbye, but seems fate prevented him.”

_‘Oh God! He must have felt so lonely! He always looked so alone in the library by himself… Did nobody help him? Could he find nobody to help? Did… did he even want help…? Ash…’_

“Is he alright? Is he alive?!”

“He survived. Max says he’s strong and stubborn and he’s starting to think he’s immortal, but he ended up in intensive care for a while.”

“Oh my God! How did he… who managed to injure him?”

“Someone named Lao, I think?”

“Lao Len Tai?”

“Yeah, that sounds familiar. Max said Ash shot him in self-defence and he died.”

Eiji had a moment where his blood ran cold. He suspected something hadn’t been quite right when he was talking to Sing in the hospital. The way the Chinese boy had paused and skirted around the question, hadn’t outright mentioned Ash and had gone strangely quiet when Eiji had started talking about siblings. He’d been trying not to mention it, hiding it from him and staying upbeat so as not to worry him, but he must have been hurting inside. Oh no – did this mean Sing would have to challenge Ash again? There was no way the little Chinatowner could beat Ash – he had said so himself, that he was glad Ash had cancelled their fight. Eiji had also been relieved – he didn’t want Ash fighting because of him, especially not fighting Sing, who had done nothing wrong apart from try to be a decent leader. He hadn’t even realised they had agreed to a grudge match to settle scores between the two gangs until after the Banana Fish incident was over. One minute he was being wheeled onto an ambulance as he faded in and out of consciousness, listening to Ash screaming his name and begging him to open his eyes, then suddenly Ash was in the hospital saying goodbye. Eiji had forced himself to get out of bed and stand so he could see him, but then realised that if Ash stayed by him like he wanted him to, he would get caught, Dino and Foxx would get away with everything, the kids and Max who Foxx had taken prisoner would die, Banana Fish would be weaponised, and Ash would never know true freedom. He had pleaded with him to run away so the cops wouldn’t catch him, he grabbed at Charlie's legs, and he remembered crying in Ibe’s arms on the floor surrounded by nurses until he blacked out. The next few days went by in a blur, and suddenly Sing was visiting and telling him Dino and Foxx were both dead, and that Ash had saved his life and had withdrawn their fight that Eiji had been unaware they were even having.

“Is it confirmed that Ash did it?”

“Charlie confirmed it. Ash was in police custody again, last I heard.”

“Is he… going to jail?”

“Max said maybe, but Charlie and Jenkins are doing everything they can to keep him free.”

Ash never caught a break. The moment he gained his freedom, with Golzine gone, Banana Fish dealt with and all revenges sought, some higher power felt it was the perfect time to decide that the rug needed to be whipped out from underneath him again. It just wasn’t fair!

“With his past record, there’s no way he’ll avoid jail!”

“That’s the thing – he’s officially dead! His old record is clean.”

“Seriously?”

That was some good news at least. Even if he did get incarcerated, it would be for a shorter term than if his previous record still stood. Had they taken his old crimes into account, he’d probably be given life imprisonment. Eiji didn’t bear think about that scenario – Ash would wither and die in a cage long-term. He deserved happiness, had rebelled against the people who had held him prisoner and used him for so long…

“Ei-chan, understand that I only know what Max told me.”

“How did Lao get to him?”

“What?”

“Ash is really observant of everything. It’s nearly impossible to catch him unawares – Lao wouldn’t be able to just stab him like that! So how did it even happen?”

“That I don’t know.”

“He must have been distracted. That’s the only explanation I can think of! But what could have… oh!”

_‘The letter… that I wrote… Sing said he delivered it at the airport! I told him where to find Ash. He must have read it at the library…’_

Eiji was silent for a while, mulling over the idea that his words might have been enough to throw Ash Lynx off kilter. Ibe’s voice carried a note of concern when he responded to the eerie quiet.

“Ei-chan? You okay?”

“Yes. It’s nothing. I’m fine.”

“He’ll be okay, Ei-chan.”

“I wish I was over there… I feel so useless here!”

“I know, but there isn’t a lot we can do about our situation right now, and it’s not like we can do much even if we were still out there! Max will look after him.”

“I guess...”

“Anyway, Ei-chan, we should think of your mother’s phone bill.”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll be in contact again real soon, alright? I’ll come and visit sometime next month – I’m going to be a bit busy until then, but I’ll definitely come and help you with your college choices!”

“Thanks, Ibe-san.”

“You take care of yourself, Ei-chan. Rest up and recover!”

“I will.”

“Bye!”

“Bye, Ibe-san.”

Ibe hung up at the other end, leaving Eiji to contemplate events alone.

_‘It’s all my fault… I promised myself I’d never take the blame again, but… this time… it really is my fault!’_

He curled up as much as he could on the floor hugging his knees and ignoring the ache in his stomach as he pressed into the wound.

_‘Even when I try and do right I do wrong… Ash… I really never did you any favours, did I?’_

***

Kaori came home to find him still sat on the floor by the telephone, eyes puffy from where he’d been crying.

“Ei-nii?” she asked him tentatively. “God, you made me jump! Why are you lurking in the hall?”

“Kaori… welcome home!” He forced a smile, but his heart wasn’t really in it. “Did you have a good time in town?”

“I’m home,” she responded, looking concerned. “You okay?”

“Yeah. I’m fine,” he said, standing stiffly. His legs had gone to sleep from being sat there so long. “I just had a call with Ibe-san.”

“You look like you’ve been crying…”

“Huh? Oh.”

“Ei-nii...?”

“It’s nothing, Kaori. He survived, so…”

“Something happen to Ibe-san?” She looked shocked. Ibe was a good friend to the family, and Kaori was almost as close to him as Eiji was.

“No! No, Ibe-san is fine!” Eiji assured her. “It’s Ash. He got hospitalised the day I flew back.”

“Hospitalised?”

“Someone stabbed him,” Eiji explained. “And I think it may have been partially my fault…”

“How on Earth could you be at fault?” Kaori frowned. “You were at an airport, in a wheelchair, probably feeling sorry for yourself. It’s not like you were there holding the knife or had hired a hitman.”

“It’s complicated, Kaori.”

“Try me.”

“Well, it’s kind-of my fault that the person who stabbed him had it in for Ash. His name was Lao, and he was in a rival gang. While I was out there, Lao’s boss and Ash’s best friend, Shorter, died trying to protect me. If I wasn’t so weak, he wouldn’t have needed to stay with me. If I wasn’t there, he’d still be alive, and Ash would still be on good terms with the Chinese.”

“Ei-nii… None of that is your fault! You never asked him to protect you!”

“I still feel guilty though.”

“You shouldn’t! Someone tried to kill you as well, by the sounds of it! Rather than being at fault, I think you maybe have survivor’s guilt.”

“Please don’t tell Mum.”

“Lips are sealed, Ei-nii – she’d do her nut!”

“I still feel bad though. Ash was reading a letter when he got attacked.”

“I don’t think reading a letter leads to people getting stabbed…”

“I guess…”

“Unless it was a love letter and the strong emotion threw him off track,” she smirked. Eiji didn’t reply, but he did look uncomfortable. “Was it a love letter?”

“No,” he said softly. “It was that letter I told you about. The one where I said goodbye.”

_‘And told him my soul would always be with him…’_

“Oh.”

They were silent for a moment or two, contemplative and just slightly awkward.

“He survived though, that’s the main thing, but…” He could feel tears threatening to return again, so he stopped himself talking.

Kaori stepped forward and gave him a hug. She knew now was not the time to tease her brother about his feelings. He needed affection and support instead. He melted into the sisterly cuddle, grateful for the comfort.

“He survived,” she repeated reassuringly, squeezing him tightly. “Your friend survived.”

“Yeah…” he whispered. “Yeah.”


	9. Sunday Bloody Sunday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eiji writes another letter to Sing.
> 
> "Sunday Bloody Sunday" - U2, 1983

Sing replied surprisingly fast. Roughly two weeks after he posted his letter, a letter from the States dropped through the letterbox, along with two campus prospectuses for colleges in Tottori and Hiroshima respectively. He pushed the catalogues aside and instead tore open the letter to read Sing’s reply.

**‘Eiji,**

**Thanks for the photo – we look awesome! When you come back, you’ll have to take looooooooads more! Glad to hear you’re (finally) back home again! I bet it feels weird after being in America so long! I get culture shocks just from leaving Chinatown, so God only knows what it must have been like for you! Kudos to you, my man! Have you seen any of your old friends since you’ve been back?**

**Sucks that your old man is in hospital. Three years? Is there nothing the doctors can do for him? I don’t know where my Dad is – he ran off after he knocked my Mom up with me. She’s never had the best taste in men because Lao’s Dad did exactly the same. Your Dad sounds like a decent guy though – send him my regards when you next go and visit, and I hope he gets better soon! Mom suggests he eat ~~nurishing~~ nourishing greens, ginger, turmeric, and sour foods like vinegar to boost his liver functions. She also said to bash the back of his calves with a hairbrush for five minutes each day, and that he should push on a pressure point in his foot… I dunno how effective that would be. You may be better sticking to modern medicine, but three years is a long time to be in a hospital! Maybe try it anyway? You never know! ~~Acipun~~ Acupuncture works really well for some people!’**

There followed a few paragraphs of light-hearted penpal script. Sing confirmed that the Chinese also celebrate the harvest, but it’s not such a huge deal in the States as it is in China itself. They have the Moon Festival in mid-Autumn, which sounded a lot to Eiji like Tsukimi – moon viewing. He’d never eaten the magical new-harvest rice before, but his Mom had brought them some mooncakes to share. He voiced genuine surprise at finding out Eiji had been a pole vaulter.

**‘You continue to astonish me! I thought you were pulling my leg at first, but your name is right there in print in one of the old Chinese newspapers at the library! They mis-printed it, they called you ‘Eyuji’, but it’s still there! Jesus, no wonder you were impulsive – everyone thinks you’re this mild-mannered Japanese tourist, but it takes some balls to do a sport like that man! I don’t know if I could. Honestly, I’m a little afraid of heights! Also explains how you could run so fast too. You are no easy person to chase down, that’s for sure! When you escaped Yut Lung’s and I followed you, if not for those two numbskulls stopping you, I’d have never caught up and found you! Then again, you passed out pretty soon afterwards, so maybe I would have done heheh. That’s pretty cool though, even if you can’t compete any more. I can now say that I have a ~~proffesi~~ professional athlete for a friend! I bet vaulting felt awesome, up in the air. Do you feel like you’re flying or falling?’ **

He went on to say that he was going to make serious attempts to attend school more often. He said that recent events had opened his eyes to the value of intellect – he tended to get bored in class though. He was one of those kids who gets restless with the slow pace, switches off, and then plays up in class. He didn’t say he was smart, but Eiji could tell from his way of speaking and acting that he was a bright kid – way brighter than he was - and it was implied in his words that when school failed to challenge him, he stopped trying. When he kept being put into detentions (which he would then skip until they accumulated over time into suspensions) he started to play hooky more and more until he was barely at school at all. He was keen to go back and give it another go though. He’d be entering high school, so new school new start. He wanted to go to college, like Eiji had. Sing hoped that, if he made an effort and applied himself, others in his gang may copy him. He didn’t specifically mention Ash, who had been privately tutored or self-taught as a natural genius for most of his life, but Eiji figured the scarily intelligent blonde had been a marked influence on many of the gang kids; you don’t necessarily need to be the strongest if you can outsmart your enemy, and Ash ruled the streets like a grandmaster at chess. He made being a nerd _cool._

Sing barely mentioned Ash at all. Neither did he mention Lao or the letter. He was either trying to spare Eiji’s feelings, or it was too raw a subject for him to talk about yet. Eiji hoped Sing was doing alright. He needed to know if he was planning on fighting Ash again, and he wanted to offer his sympathy that his brother had passed away. He would be straight with him and ask him in his reply.

**‘How are you planning to earn money, Eiji? Gonna get a job? Maybe you could go work for the Yakuza haha! Then we’d be rivals >:D **

**Good luck anyway – and don’t go working too hard too fast! Bullet wounds ain’t no joke, man!**

**Your friend,**

**Sing’**

He had several questions for Sing, so he penned him a reply right away.

**‘Dearest Sing,**

**I would love to come and take more photos, but Ibe and I found out we’d overstayed our visas. We’re appealing, but I probably can’t get back to America for a while. You are more than welcome to come visit me in Izumo if you can though! You can stay at my place – we have loads of room! I haven’t seen any of my old school friends, but most of them have moved on. They are either at college, or they moved nearer Tokyo for work. None of them are still in Izumo, and I lost contact while I was in the States. I guess that happens sometimes with friends, and most of us were just friends by proximity anyway. We were bound to drift apart eventually. My adult friends and neighbours, however, I will no doubt run into at some point – Takahashi-san next door has already been round with a large jar of pickles, and she seemed overjoyed to see me back! And once I’ve recovered enough, I’m going to go see my old coach Kobayashi-san and see if he’ll let me use the local track for running occasionally. I can’t jump any more, and I never was much good at throwing sports like discus or javelin, but I still want to stay fit. I should be okay with long distance running. You see little old men in their 80s jogging, so if they can do it, so can I.**

**Also, I’m not going to go and beat my Dad up with a hairbrush! He has had Japanese acupuncture a few times before, and it seemed to work a little maybe? I’ll ask if he can have some more, but I fear it may be more in the head than actually helping... I do not know. Medicine is mysterious. Japanese hospital food is not like American hospitals either. It’s really healthy and nourishing! He had Chinese Sweet and Sour Pork the other day, and we always have pickles with every meal, so he’s getting sour foods like your Mom suggested. Doctors say his only hope now is a transplant, but we’re having difficulty finding a donor. Neither Kaori (my sister) or myself are a match. We pray each day that a donor will be found.**

**To make money, I am thinking of getting a part-time job. I think I’ll avoid organised crime from now on – I have had more than enough mafia to last a lifetime in America! The problems I had with Yut Lung have put me off the idea. I want something safe and non-threatening, like a convenience store or a restaurant. Besides, I am good boy – I want to stay out of trouble! It’ll only make people worry about me, and I’m sick and tired of doing that…’**

He thought for several minutes about how to voice his questions in a letter in a sympathetic way, wondering if he could even do it. There was a possibility Sing would never reply, and he would lose contact with a good friend. It was a risk he had to take.

**‘Thinking of worrying for others – Sing, I know what happened to Lao. I am sorry. You have my deepest** **condolences. _Go-shūshō-sama desu._ _Aitō no i o hyō shimasu._ How are you coping? You’re not thinking of challenging Ash again, are you? Please don’t. I beg you. You are both my friends and I couldn't bear it!**

**I also must know… how is Ash doing? All I know is he is alive, but that is all. He hasn’t contacted me, or if he has, I’ve not received anything yet. He must be out of the hospital by now. I know you are the last person I should be asking this, especially as he killed your brother, but… I have no other contacts to ask.’**

He decided against mentioning the contents of his letter, that it was maybe his fault that Ash was distracted enough to be caught out by Lao. Had Lao not seen an opening, he never would have attacked and Ash would have had no need to retaliate. Eventually, the truth about Shorter would be told. Sing wanted to tell the others, so it was only a matter of time before he began leaking that information about, whether Ash wanted him to or not. It would soon become apparent that Ash was no threat to the Chinatowners at all, and Lao would back off. Nobody needed to get hurt at all.

**‘Again, Sing. I’m sorry.**

**All my love,**

**Eiji’**

His Mum kept a stock of koden bukuro – funeral money envelopes – in a stationary drawer in the living room. He had dug out a small one earlier, and had folded a few of his leftover dollar bills inside it. It was a token gesture; he didn’t have much left, but he included his last $10 bill, and a $1 to make it an odd figure for prosperity (he knew the Chinese were superstitious like that). Yen would be useless there, but he wanted to do something, no matter how small. He wrapped the letter gently around the koden bukuro, the black ribbon leaving a slight indent in the paper when he pressed it down. He stuffed it into an envelope, using cellotape to seal it closed instead of a sticker, not trusting the envelope glue to protect his money over such a long journey. A serious letter like this should probably not be emblazoned with Norinori anyway.

He would await response with baited breath, and if Sing never replied he would hope that Ibe came bearing good news when he next visited.


	10. Sweet Child 'O Mine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eiji babysits his cousin and Kaori teases him at the Lantern festival. 
> 
> 'Sweet Child 'O Mine' - Guns and Roses, 1987

The late October festival season crept up, arriving with a bang. Due to his temporary disability, Eiji couldn’t participate in the drum festival like he would usually. He was a little disappointed; it had been more than two years since he’d been to the Matsue festival, and now he was back he couldn’t go and enjoy himself. The drum festival was just too boisterous and tiring for someone recovering from a gunshot wound to cope with. Instead, his mother had volunteered him to stay at his Aunt’s place and babysit his youngest cousin, Yuuri. He was only three-years-old, and still too young to participate. Next year, when he started kindergarten, would be his first year being a drum bearer, but for now, to save on childcare, Eiji was asked to keep an eye on him. He was generally a quiet and good-natured kid, so he shouldn’t be too much bother.

He hadn’t seen his Aunt and cousins in so long, he almost didn’t recognise them. Tetsuya recognised him though.

“EIJI!” A nine-year-old child practically sprinted up to him and enveloped him in a warm embrace. The wheelchair made it difficult for him to reach, but he managed it by standing on the footrests.

“Tetsuya? When did you get so big?!”

“I’m over 140cm now!” Tetsuya told him, beaming. “I’m gonna be soooooooo tall!”

“I bet!” Eiji smiled.

Yuuri had been a little shy at first. He’d still been a baby when Eiji had gone to the States, a chubby little kid who was just learning to walk and speak, so he couldn’t remember much about his sporty cousin other than he had been kind and helpful. He’d been very quiet when his mother and siblings had left with Kaori and Okumura-san, leaving him alone with this young man who was practically a stranger. It didn’t take him long to open up to him though. Yuuri was a good judge of character, and usually decided within a couple of minutes if you were worthy of befriending or not. They’d first bonded over colouring in, Eiji letting him eat chocolate BEFORE lunchtime, then they’d watched his ‘Dogtanian’ video for an hour. Eiji won him over totally by letting him sit in his wheelchair with him, perched on his lap while he pushed them both down to the park for some fresh air; Yuuri was light and small enough that the extra weight didn’t aggravate his condition, and as long as his cousin sat still it was no bother at all. Because everyone was at the festival, the local play area was deserted so he and Yuuri had the place to themselves. He watched his cousin climbing over the jungle gym with a small smile, remembering when he and Kaori used to play here with Hiyoko.

Yuuki fell and scraped his knee, and Eiji stood from his chair and rushed over in concern.

“Yuuki, are you alright?”

“M…my knee…” the young boy stuttered, on the verge of tears.

“What this?” Eiji pointed at his bloody knee, the tiniest of grazes stinging on his tiny kneecap. “This little thing here? Oooh, looks nasty! You know… I think we’re going to have to amputate the whole leg.”

“What?” Yuuki yelped, tears suddenly forgotten. “That’s a lie! You’re lying! I’ve had worse than this before!”

“Oh, but the little ones are the worst!” Eiji teased. “You know how a papercut hurts so bad?”

“Liar!”

“Don’t worry though – I think I can save it! I got very good at first aid in America. Let’s get home and get it cleaned up quick, okay?”

His cousin sat as still as he could, cuddling up to him and trying not to move his leg at all the entire way home, but neither did he cry. Eiji patched him up quickly with some antiseptic spray and a sticking plaster, and he was soon bounding around the house right as rain again.

The rest of the family returned for their traditional festival family dinner in the late afternoon. Auntie Sakura usually prepared several traditional foods and family recipes in advance for them to share, and it was no exception this year. Kaori had brought him a lucky rice cake from the festival that she said she had ‘caught’, although Eiji was dubious. With her, it was just as likely she had picked it up off the floor. He accepted it with thanks, but threw it out when she wasn’t looking to be safe. They enjoyed a delicious family feast, Yuuki clinging to him throughout.

General discussions were had about how Kaori, Hiyoko and Tetsuya were doing at school, how work was going at the canning factory, Auntie Sakura had recently been promoted so they congratulated her for that… and then talk cycled around to Eiji and his time in America. He’d instantly clammed up, keeping his replies light and non-committal.

“So, what did you do out there?” his aunt had asked.

“Oh, you know… assistant stuff. I set up cameras, took some photos, got to know the people we were interviewing… that sort of thing.”

“You should tell them more about Ash,” Kaori said, acting innocent but side-eyeing Eiji cheekily.

“Kaori…”

“Shunichi told me he was good friends with several gang kids out there,” his mother explained. “One of them was named Wildcat Ash, or something like that. Shunichi assures me he was a good kid and he looked after Eiji while he was over there. Eiji mentions him quite often too, although he never goes into too much detail.”

“Gang kids?”

“Ibe-san was doing an article on American gangs,” Eiji explained. “One of the reasons I was useful was because I was the same age as most of them, so they were more likely to talk to me than to him. I got to be good friends with several of them. Everyone assumes they’d be these horrible criminals with no honour or consideration for anyone but themselves, but… most of them are really nice people. And Ibe-san and I had police protection, so we were never too far away from help.”

“Which is why he got shot,” Tetsuya said candidly.

“That was just unfortunate,” Eiji said, keeping his smile fixed to his face. Maintaining the pretence with his family that America hadn’t been absolutely terrifying and that his life had hadn’t been in constant danger was proving more and more difficult as time went by, but he had to stick with it. The only ones who knew differently were his father and, to a lesser degree, Kaori. He trusted them both to keep their mouths shut about the danger aspect at least, but when it came to issues of the heart, Kaori was less honourable...

“He got to be _especially_ good friends with Ash,” she said smarmily.

“That’s because he was the leader!” Eiji added quickly. “So I spent the most time with Ash.” That was a lie – if anything, he spent more time with Kong and Bones, or else completely alone. He had, however, spent more _intimate_ time with Ash. “He was a wonderful person though – really smart, and a good leader! And he took good care of a dumb foreigner like me.”

“He sounds like he’s in denial,” Hiyoko whispered to Kaori, and she sniggered. Kaori had no doubt told her about their friendship. He glared at her briefly.

“Well, he sounds nice,” Auntie Sakura said dismissively. She could obviously see Eiji was getting a little uncomfortable at the topic of conversation, so she was keen to move it along. “Did you see any of the tourist sights in New York with Ibe-san? I’d love to see the Empire State myself…”

Eiji thanked his aunt with sparkly doe-eyed appreciation, and started chatting happily about how he and Ibe-san had been to the observation floor of the Empire State and about their trip on the Circle Line ferry, how they had navigated the hustle and bustle of Times Square and had walked through Central Park and visited several museums. He was about to describe the NYPL, but paused. The library was a place he’d not actually visited with Ibe, at least not the interior. He considered it a special place, almost sacred, between himself and Ash. He described the giant lions guarding the entrance, and left it at that.

After dinner, Kaori agreed to pushing him in his chair into Matsue to see the lantern festival illuminations. They had always done that together as kids anyway, so she was happy to keep the tradition alive now he was home again. Hiyori came with them, and they chatted idly about pop culture for a while. When they got to the food stands, Hiyoko offered to go and get them all some snacks. She sauntered off to join the queue, leaving Kaori and Eiji alone.

“You are very quiet, Ei-nii,” she commented. “You have something on your mind.”

“Not especially,” Eiji lied. In truth, he’d had several things on his mind for a while now.

“Thinking about Ash?” she smirked.

“What? No!” he denied. “I was actually thinking I’m starting to hurt a little. Looking after Yuuki was tougher than I thought. I should take some painkillers before we go to the castle.” 

“You know what’s really good for recovery?”

“What?”

“Swimming.”

Eiji froze, picking up the mischievous tone in his sister’s words. He slowly turned his head to stare at her, looking a little worried.

“Kaori…”

“If you won’t confess, then you’re going in the Kitata!”

“Kaori, you’re only joking… right?”

Kaori ignored him, instead pushing him off course towards the edge of the moat.

“Kaori…”

She hummed happily and picked up the pace.

“Kaori – you wouldn’t dare!” Eiji said, panic barely hidden in his voice as he gripped the arms of the chair. “Mum would kill you!”

“Mum likes me, she’d just yell at me a bit,” Kaori smirked. “I can stop this now if you just tell me what I want to know!”

“Kaori! Kaori – I’m not supposed to get the bandages wet!” Eiji yelped as she brought the chair dangerously close to the edge. “I can’t swim in this condition!”

Kaori sniggered as she started to tip the chair. Eiji felt himself sliding forward towards the water, and he scrambled to plant his feet on the floor and keep a tight hold of the chair.

“Shit! Kaori – NO!”

“You gonna confess?” she asked a final time, holding the chair at a dangerous slant.

“What do you want me to say?!” Eiji snapped anxiously.

“That you have a crush on this Ash person!”

“WHAT?!”

“You avoid mentioning him in front of mum, or you change the subject quickly away from him, but he’s all you talk about when we’re alone! Admit it, and I’ll let you live!”

“Kaori, you’re being ridiculous! It’s not like that! I don’t have a-“

“You sure about that, Ei-nii?”

He’d been through the idea in his head multiple times recently, more so since his sister had called him out on it, and kept coming back to the same conclusion. That it was impossible. They were just friends. Really close friends, who think a lot of each other.

_‘And who have kissed. And hugged. And slept in the same bed a few times...’_

He did find Ash beautiful to look at. He was pretty and effeminate, his colourings pale and exotic to Eiji, his personality fiery and passionate, wild and exciting on the outside, but soft and gentle, shy and insecure once you scratch under the surface. He was intriguing, photogenic, and liked to tease. Eiji had never had feelings beyond friendship for boys before, and he wasn’t entirely sure he had them for Ash either. Then again, neither had he caught feelings for a girl before. He’d always been pretty passive, lacking in interest with anyone. When it came to sexual orientation, he was ‘nothing’. He would only say straight because that was ‘normal’ and maybe he just hadn’t found the right person yet. The whole idea that, maybe he wasn’t straight, that maybe he could be in love with a guy, was confusing and a little scary. The only thing he was certain about was that he didn’t think of Ash in a sexual way. Those thoughts had never really crossed his mind about anyone, but especially so when it came to his abused American friend.

_‘Ash says people who want him lust after him. Everyone wants to screw him. I don’t. I never have! I want him to be safe and happy, and I want to spend time with him, but… I don’t want to fuck him. I’ve seen him in the bath or just in his underpants and felt nothing. Surely, if it was love, I’d be having those fantasies. So, we must just be friends… right?’_

They were close though. Eiji was one of only a handful of people Ash trusted, and probably the only person he trusted absolutely. He caught himself thinking about him a lot, several times a day, wondering what Ash was up to now. Was he alright? Did he miss him too? Was he eating right? Was he safe? He found himself getting annoyed that he hadn’t been in contact. Upset that, after everything they’d been through together, Ash seemed to have ghosted him. Depressed by the idea that, maybe, he’d just been a fair-weather friend, that now he was no longer around Ash would brush him aside and move on. Was he that fickle? No - he couldn't be! This was Ash! He trusted Ash resolutely. 

_‘Maybe I do have a crush. Is that what a crush is? I’ve never had one before – I don’t know! I don’t understand love at all!’_

“If I say ‘maybe’ will you stop trying to drown me?”

“Maybe is a soft yes, Ei-nii,” Kaori smirked, bringing the chair flat again. She laughed heartily. “Oh my God - your face was a picture! When I started tipping you out you looked like you’d seen a kappa coming for your shirikodama! Hahaha!”

“Kaori – seriously! I can’t swim right now! If I fell in, I could have drowned! It’s not a laughing matter!”

“I wouldn’t really kick you out of your chair, Ei-nii! What do you take me for?”

“You are a horrible sister!”

“You love me really!”

“I should have stayed in America,” Eiji muttered. “It was safer!”

“Don’t be like that,” she said, fake-pouting through her giggles.

Hiyoko returned then with three portions of mitarashi dango. Eiji ate his moodily, feeling a little miffed towards his sister, but he cheered up a little when she wheeled him through the lantern fields later on. He always had loved the festival of lights; something about it was soothing and enthralling, making Matsue look romantic and otherworldly. When Hiyoko and Kaori ran into some schoolfriends at the castle, their shrill high-school voices relegating him to background character status, he had offered to wheel himself back.

“Are you sure?” Kaori had asked, frowning.

“It’s not that far,” he insisted. He felt like taking some alone time anyway; wheeling himself along the waterfront might help him clear his mind, and it was a beautiful night. He could take his time and, if his arms tired, he wasn’t that badly injured now that he couldn’t stand and walk for a bit, using the chair as a walking frame, or even just park up by the river and take a breather for a while. People watching was often just as exciting as the festival itself, after all.

“Well, alright then. I’ll see you back at Auntie’s later!”

He rolled away, feeling strangely lonely, like he didn’t really belong here anymore. He felt like crying again, but he managed to hold his emotions in.

_‘I wish Ash were here…’_


	11. Kids In America

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eiji recieves a care package from Ash's Gang
> 
> 'Kids In America' - Kim Wilde, 1981

A package arrived from the States, crudely stuck with brown parcel tape and labelled with marker pen. He tried to open it with his nails, but the tape proved to be too tough so he ended up attacking it with kitchen scissors. Once he finally got inside, he discovered several candy bars of various brands, sizes and flavours, a roll of Oreos, a couple of bags of (mostly smashed) potato chips and some American coffee grounds (‘We thought you may be missing good coffee’, a note stuck to the jar said). A mix tape was in there with several songs popular in the States right now that they’d picked out for him and likely recorded from the radio (‘Some real music’, said another note). Looking at the playlist, he could almost guess which member had recommended which song. Alex would have picked the British Rock ballads, a couple of Queen songs and a Bowie track standing out prominently; Kong probably chose the Run D.M.C and L.L. Cool J tracks; Bones loved pop music so the Michael Jackson and Madonna tracks had his name all over them. He was puzzled by who could have possibly chosen ‘Final Countdown’ by Europe though, but he wasn’t complaining. There were also a handful of letters from several people, and a few photos they’d obviously taken of themselves while drunk, because they were mainly blurred selfies taken on a disposable camera. Top of the pile was a letter from Alex, official looking in a plain white envelope, followed by a nice little notelet from Kong and an essay on some ruled A4 from Bones. Eiji found himself getting excited.

_‘If Alex and the others are writing, then maybe…’_

He read Alex’s first.

**‘Eiji,**

**Hope you’re doing alright back home! We all miss you here. We were just talking about you the other day, and we all thought ‘you know what he might like – fucking candy!’ So we sent you some candy – we hope you like it! Maybe share it with your Japanese buddies, spread that Hershey’s love around.**

**You’d have laughed the other week! I came into some money – perfectly legitimate, I can already see your disapproval – it’s not my fault they were dumbasses! I was just stood outside an underground bar, waiting for Cain so we could talk gang stuff, and these five out-of-towners come up to me and asked if I’d let them into the club. I thought they were joking, so said ‘$10 each, and it’s a deal’, thinking they’d laugh at me or move along. They paid up. So I stepped aside, and once they were in I booked it! Met up with Cain ten minutes later and we went and brought everyone pizza to share.**

**Speaking of Cain, our alliance with Black Sabbath seems to be holding pretty strong, which has given us a lot more power in Manhattan and others have started making truces and coming to territory agreements without a fight. I’m not sure if it’s because we’re a mixed-race gang so he’s willing to help us out, or if it’s because Boss was that scary and charismatic when they first talked, but Cain has proven to be the best damn ally we’ve ever had!**

**Speaking of the Boss… he’s no longer the Boss. I’m in charge of the boys now, after he stepped down. He’s moved in with that war vet journalist guy with the mouthy ex-wife, Lobo, or whatever his name was. Think he’s making money using his brain and doing independent research. He avoided jail by the skin of his teeth and seems keen to stay out of the big house, and I can’t blame him.’**

Eiji had to pause for a second and re-read that paragraph to make sure he wasn’t imagining things.

‘A _sh stepped down?’_

**‘He gave us all a shit-ton of money before he left though! I knew he’d embezzled some stuff out of Dino’s stocks and shares, but I had no idea he was holding that much spare change! He gave us all, like, $20,000 each. I’ve put mine towards buying my first proper crib – gonna move in with Kong and Bones and they’ve agreed to use their share for furniture and stuff, then we’ll look at getting respectable jobs. Us – respectable! Can you believe that! A couple of the other guys were looking at doing the same. One of them paid off his Mom’s medical debts, but most of them have no clue what to do with $20,000.**

**He gave the same amount to everyone in Sing and Cain’s gangs as well, kind-of a peace agreement, thanks for the help, sorry for the trouble, compensation for your loss, farewell thing. I think really he just wanted to get rid of the dirty money now that whole Banana Fish thing is over and he doesn’t need it, so he spent it on something good. He told me he has nothing left now – he used his own share to pay his bail and pay off a large fine, and then donated a load to charity. Gives him incentive to work ‘cause he needs the money and wants to earn it properly, he says. Said something about it being meaningless unless he earnt it.’**

Ash had stolen just shy of $50 million from Dino. He’d used a fair portion of it paying a ludicrously high rent on their fancy apartment, and had splashed it around liberally paying for information and anonymity. The Fly had taken a huge cut for his services and wares, and almost as much again had been spent on high-end fashionable clothes that Ash used as a disguise when out and about, on a high-end camera rig for Eiji to take photos of Golzine’s building opposite, and on general things like food and entertainment. He still had the camera; it was one of the things Ibe had taken from the apartment and returned to him while he was in hospital. It currently sat on his desk.

**‘Dunno what Sing is using his share for, but Cain wants to be a lawyer. He says there are not enough black lawyers to look out for black citizens, and they get unfairly treated by the law so he wants to change that. He’s going to use it to pay his way through college, so I don’t think it’ll be too long before another boss steps down. I think he’ll do well though. He takes no shit from nobody, so he’ll rule in a courthouse! I’d pay for his services, and now I have $20,000, maybe I can afford a decent lawyer heh!**

**We’re all following the Boss’ example though, and are trying to stay outta trouble. With Arthur gone and everybody trying to make alliances instead of fighting us ‘cause they’re scared of us after what we did, it’s proving easier than we thought. We ain’t got the Corsicans breathing down our necks any more either. Life is pretty sweet!**

**Hopefully your visa issues get sorted. Come visit us soon if you can! Bring us some Japanese candy! I wanna try a green tea Kit Kat!**

**Alex’**

The other letters had a similar spiel, that they missed him, what some of them were doing with their $20,000, expressing shock that Ash had stepped down. Kong had put a nice paragraph in about how he missed Eiji’s cooking; he would often cook lunch for the three of them when Kong and Bones were on ‘Eiji duty’ looking out for him. He lamented that his diet had nose-dived since he’d gone back to Japan, and he’d gained several pounds. Bone’s letter was four pages long but, unfortunately, he had the handwriting of either a doctor or a 3-year-old child, and Eiji couldn’t read most of it. The bits he could read said things like:

 **‘You’re a gem, Eiji! I love you and Kong loves you and Alex loves you and the Boss loves you!’** and **‘Screw visas – put yourself in a box and post your way to New York! We’ll hide ya from immigration!’**

He figured the rest of the letter was much the same.

He smiled at their sentiment, missing them, but he also felt disappointed at the care package, not because it wasn’t heartfelt – it was – but because Ash hadn’t sent a letter with it as well. He’d gotten his hopes up, seeing it was from the gang, only to have them dashed by the absence of even a note or a memo.

_‘Alex had said he’d stepped down, so maybe he’s left entirely?’_

He couldn’t imagine Ash abandoning his gang altogether though. Even if he stepped down, he’d still be their friend. He thought too much of them to just abandon them, and judging by the tone of the letters he had abdicated on good terms, implying he was still around. Maybe he was thinking too much into things. Ash wasn’t the only one who hadn’t written; maybe he was too busy, or they hadn’t been able to get a letter from him in time. Maybe an individual letter was already in the mail on its way to him?

Opening a packet of Reeces pieces and munching on a few of the crunchy little pellets, he decided he would send Alex as many different Kit Kats as he possibly could in reply, telling him he didn’t have to wait to try a matcha one and asking if he had any more requests.

***

A letter from Sing arrived a week later, excitedly confirming his windfall from Ash.

**‘He gave me $20K! Can you believe that! Now I can afford college! I want to study business management – I think it’ll help me be a better leader. The Lee ~~sin~~ syndicate was originally going to pay for me to go, but now I can afford it myself – I will still work together with Yut Lung to bring power back to the syndicate, but I don’t really want to owe them anything either. It’s better if they owe me, rather than the other way around. I’ll make my own money and eventually buy Mom a nicer apartment. Yut Lung has calmed ~~cunsi~~ considerably in recent weeks though, but I still don’t trust him completely. I’m keeping my eye on him in case he uses me and stabs me in the back or something, but somehow I don’t think he will. Ever since I slapped him, he’s been acting less of a prick and is quite civil. He listens to my advice, if you can believe that!’**

Seemed Sing was using his $20,000 for education and self-improvement, just like Cain was. Ash’s influence had clearly rubbed off on them.

Sing also confirmed, much to Eiji’s relief, that he would not be fighting Ash. The two of them had reached a mutual agreement, and Sing had finally told his boys the truth about Shorter, effectively ending the conflict. He apologised that he hadn’t told Eiji sooner about Ash being stabbed, and he thanked him for thinking about him when he was mourning Lao. He’d included a photo of himself in a suit from the funeral, hair slicked back. **‘I scrub up quite well,’** was scribbled on the back.

Eiji breathed a massive sigh of relief after reading the letter, tension melting out of his shoulders as he slumped in his desk chair. He hadn’t even realised the level of anxiety he had been feeling over the whole situation, across an ocean and out of his control as it was. Knowing that neither of them had to suffer any more for an event he still partly blamed himself for eased many fears and quelled several intrusive thoughts.

Most importantly, after several months, Shorter could finally rest in peace.


	12. I Want To Know What Love Is

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After a talk with his father, Eiji finally comes to terms with his asexuality, even if he doesn't actually have a term for it (it is the 80s!) and understands better his romantic feelings for Ash.
> 
> 'I Want To Know What Love Is' - Foreigner, 1984

“Dad. Can I ask you a question?”

Eiji had visited his father in hospital again. He’d been regularly since returning to Japan, although usually they just spoke of trivial things, Eiji keeping him in the loop regarding his college and how he was healing. They’d joke a bit and cheer each other up. This time, however, he had some more personal issues he wanted to talk to another man about. Ibe was no good; Ibe was a lovely person, but he had never been very successful when it came to the ladies. He’d had a fiancé when he’d first met him, but she left him shortly afterwards. Then he’d had a string of girlfriends but nobody ever stuck around long. It never seemed to bother him much, suggesting to Eiji that Ibe had girlfriends purely because it’s the done thing to find a woman and settle, rather than because he genuinely wanted to be in a relationship. He liked these ladies, but that was where a line was drawn. It wasn’t love.

“You just did, Eiji,” his dad grinned, “But go ahead.”

“What does love feel like?”

“Love?”

“I don’t mean, like, the love of a child and parent or that between friends,” Eiji explained. “I get them, but… how did you know that Mum was the one for you? How did you know that what you felt for her was different?”

“Ah. That kind of love.”

“Hmm.”

“I’m not sure if I can answer the question you asked. When you love someone, you just… you know. I can’t really describe it.”

“I’m very confused,” Eiji said quietly. “Because what I feel… it isn’t like how any of my friends described it, or like the magazines and movies all say. I just feel like this person is a friend but, in reality, they are so much more than that to me. I didn’t realise at first, but I’m beginning to wonder if what I feel is a different kind of love entirely.”

“Is this about that boy you met in America?”

“Err…”

“Say no more, your face speaks volumes,” his father sighed. “Maybe the fact it’s another boy has scared you a little?”

“Maybe…”

“I imagine finding out that you’re not into girls all that much could be a bit terrifying and confusing.”

“That’s the thing; I’m not into guys either. Or I wasn’t. I’m pretty sure of that. I tried looking at magazines of both girls and boys, and I’ve watched porn and just found myself laughing at the plot. I… I don’t think I’m into anything… and that’s why I’m confused,” Eiji frowned. “My own emotions are skewed and, honestly, I don’t know what I think any more. Maybe I am gay.”

“What you’re saying is, you think you love this boy, but you don’t want to have sex with him, yes?”

“Well, yeah. I guess. But is that love? Maybe he’s just a really good friend like I first thought.”

“Eiji, whatever society has said about love and attraction and sex – chuck it out the window, because it is a load of bull,” his Dad said wisely. “Love and sex are separate entities that just happen to share a bed occasionally. You can love someone with all your heart and not want to have sex with them, and you can also have passionate sex with someone you barely know. It is alright to not be interested in sex. A lot of people aren’t.”

“Oh.”

“Want me to let you in on a little secret?” his Dad whispered, beckoning Eiji closer. “You and me are more alike than you’d think.”

“Huh?”

“I love your Mother very much, don’t get me wrong, but when it comes to sex… well… it just doesn’t do it for me. The amount of times we’ve done it can be counted on one hand. We did it on our wedding night, and we’ve since done it to have children. That’s it.”

Sudden explanations burst in Eiji’s mind at that statement. For one, his Dad might be the only person he had ever met who got his feelings on sex. All his friends through high school had entered that horny period mid-puberty, where anything with a pulse might inspire urges in them. He’d never really had that revelation, and had played along with their banter just to fit in, not really understanding it. The girls were almost as bad, flocking around boys like locusts, conversations switching from kid-stuff to dating and rating people on their attractiveness, trying to find a mate. Even his sister had entered a boy crazy phase when she was around thirteen, and it had continued from then on. He figured he was too busy with pole vaulting and being the man around the house that those feelings just hadn’t had chance to manifest. Knowing his Dad was like he was, even at his age, was both surprising and comforting. However, it may explain his Mother’s infidelity. If she was interested in sex, and Dad hadn’t been putting out, her straying may not have necessarily been done maliciously. She was restless and sought satisfaction elsewhere, but it didn’t mean she loved those guys the way she loved Dad. Ash would probably understand that facet of humanity better than anyone, considering a lot of the paedos he had encountered had been married men, but it still left a bad taste in Eiji’s mouth even if he could now grasp the concept a little clearer than before. She’d still been unfaithful.

“So… you’ve never had those naughty thoughts people talk about?” Eiji asked him, curiously.

“I wouldn’t say never. I think everyone has preferences and turn-ons. But… when it comes to being attracted to someone like that… Not really, no.”

“I’m still not certain what I feel for Ash though… I think about him all the time, and it makes me sad and lonely when I think about him. I worry about him a lot. I miss him more than I thought I would, almost like the way I missed home when I first went over to the States, but… stronger.”

“It sounds to me like you have romantic feelings, Eiji,” his father said sagely. “They can be separate from sexual attraction, but you might still be comfortable being intimate with that person. Hugs and kisses, hand holding, all the mushy stuff.”

_‘A little too comfortable with it…’_

“We did used to hug sometimes. He’d let me hug him when he was feeling scared or upset, and we shared a bed a few times. I didn't think too much about it. Ibe-san told me that Americans were more... handsy, than we are, and I felt like I wanted to comfort him somehow. I just thought I was being a caring friend, but… boys don’t really do that, do they?”

“Not usually,” his Dad admitted, “although I wouldn’t be ashamed of being a compassionate soul. Treasure that side of yourself because kindness is a valuable asset.”

“I really miss him, Dad.”

“He probably misses you too.”

“He hasn’t written or anything though,” Eiji sighed, hanging his head miserably.

“Really? That does surprise me,” his Dad said, raising his eyebrows. “Americans have strange ideas sometimes though. Give him time.”

“He always was stubborn,” Eiji muttered, making his Dad chuckle.

“He’s probably as confused as you are,” he said kindly.

“You seem to have accepted my abnormal-ness remarkably well,” Eiji told him.

“I just want you to be happy. If this Ash person does that for you, then I’ll accept whatever you are. You do you and I’ll do my job as a parent and support you.”

“Dad…”

“Besides, Kaori is insanely boy-driven, so I’ll get grandkids that way,” his Dad added cheekily with a wink.

“Dad!!!”

“Kidding, Eiji!”

“I’m grateful you’re my Dad,” Eiji told him. “I’m not sure if Mum will be quite as happy to hear I'm queer though.”

“Eiji, she is like me in that she just wants you to be happy,” his Dad said. “She may go into denial for a while, but she’d accept you.”

“I hope so. Kaori already has.”

“Kaori reads yaoi, so having a gay brother would be like a dream come true for her,” his Dad smirked. “She thinks I don’t know, but a father always knows.”

***

After leaving his Father, Eiji made his way to the Izumo Taisha shrine on the bus from the hospital. Their talk had helped him to get his thoughts and feelings in order, and he was finally accepting several concepts that had scared and confused him at first. For one, he was romantically interested in someone for the first time. He felt a little stupid that it had taken him this long to accept this idea, but realising that there were other people out there who experienced attraction without it being sexual had soothed his soul and reassured him that he wasn’t broken. So many unanswered questions had been magically erased, and a blindfold had been removed from his eyes allowing him to see his feelings clearly. Ash wasn’t just his best friend; Ash had been his soulmate, his perfect other half, the shaded yin to his optimistic yang. Secondly, the person he was in love with was male. He was uncertain if that made him bi, gay, or any other number of other colourful sexual orientations; all he knew right now was he was queer, and knowing he had a label however vague helped him immensely in discovering who he was as a person, even if just a little bit.

 _‘I’d call myself Ash-sexual,’_ he thought, smiling. _‘Only it’s not sexual at all, is it? This love…’_

He sat on a bench at the shrine, enjoying the quiet and watching the worshippers come and go, feeling strangely at peace for the first time in a while. The God Ōkuninushi was clearly smiling on him today with good fortune. He fiddled with a ¥5 coin, running it back and forth over the back of his fingers dexterously, before standing and making his way over to the shrine to pray.

He tossed the coin into the offering box, clapped four times, and prayed hard to the God of good relationships.

_‘Please keep Ash safe until I can see him again. Bless him with friends and good fortune and all the happiness he deserves. I love him, Kami-sama. I was dumb not to notice my own feelings before now, but understand I’ve never felt this way before about anyone. Even now, I could probably still use some divine wisdom… Please let sayonara not be forever, and allow us a reunion so I can tell him!’_


	13. Chariots of Fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eiji visits the track where he used to train and runs into his old coach
> 
> 'Chariots of Fire' - Vangelis, 1981

Eiji had been down to the local athletics track where he used to train in prior to high school. He’d ran into his old coach, Kobayashi-san, a middle-aged gentleman with salt-and-pepper hair and a slight paunch. He would coach children in various track and field events, and had been the one to inspire Eiji to try for pole vault when he’d seen how good he was with high jump. He’d coached Eiji from elementary, all through middle school, Eiji only switching to a new coach when he went to high school and started competing professionally and, even then, he would still come to the track at weekends to train further. His sister also received coaching from him, and both had thrived under his tutelage. Kobayashi had been there the very first time he had vaulted, aged 13. He’d only jumped about 2 metres, without a set bar to get over, just testing out how well he dealt with handling the pole, take-off and landing, but the feeling of freedom those precious few seconds in the air had given him was like a drug and had him hooked.

“Eiji! My goodness, it’s been a while!” he said when Eiji came to greet him.

“Yeah, must be a couple of years since I was last here,” he admitted.

“Heard you got into a spot of bother over yonder,” Kobayashi frowned. “Your sister said you’d been shot! You’ve been away from the track for a while anyway, but…”

“I can’t vault anymore,” Eiji confirmed. He lifted his shirt to show off the scar, and Kobayashi let out a low whistle. It was healing well, the wound now closed, the stitches removed and the last remaining scabs sloughed off, but the scar tissue left behind was still a painful red shade. For the most part, it didn’t hurt any more as long as he didn’t press on it or overstretch; it was likely the area would be tender for the rest of his life though.

“Nasty!” he said. “Yeah, I think you’re officially retired now. It’s a damn shame, Ei-kun, really! You were the best student we ever had!”

“I had kinda already retired after I messed up my ankle.”

“True, true….”

“These things happen, I guess,” Eiji sighed. “It wasn’t like I was ever going to win anyway.”

“You were still one of the best,” Kobayashi assured him. “Have you ever considered going into coaching? You were studying sports science at college, weren’t you?”

“What, like, those who can, do, those who can’t, teach?” Eiji frowned. He smirked before adding, “Is that what you did, Kobayashi-san?”

“Cheeky little… No!”

Eiji laughed good-naturedly. “I’ve decided to try my hand at photography instead,” he explained. “It seemed better than pining after something I can no longer achieve for myself. Vaulting offered me a glimpse of freedom, but it never lasts. Photos capture those little moments and save them forever.”

“Since when were you poetic?” Kobayashi frowned.

“I’m not poetic, I’ve just seen the world from another angle and had time to re-evaluate my entire life.”

“Sounds pretty poetic to me,” Kobayashi shrugged. “Anyway, what brings you down here to my fine establishment?”

Eiji asked him if it was okay to come down and use the track occasionally for gentle exercise. His doctor had now given him a clean bill of health provided he kept up with the physio, and now he was out of the wheelchair it was recommended he start trying light exercise, like jogging or cycling. He didn’t own a bike, which left one other option.

“I should be alright to run,” he explained to Kobayashi. “I need to build up my fitness again, but I figured the track was safer than the road and I can measure my distance easier by counting laps.”

“You should know by now that you’re welcome here any time,” Kobayashi told him. “If the gate is open, the field is yours!”

“Thanks Kobayashi-san!”

“Don’t mention it!”

He got changed into a basic sports kit of jogging bottoms and vest with some track shoes. He clipped a Walkman to his belt, the mix tape from America playing as a background beat to jog to, then stretched lightly before setting off at a slow pace around the track. It had been a long while since he’d done any exercise at all, never mind hard cardio like running. Strangely enough, it caused his gunshot wound very little pain – he’d been expecting it to stab him with every deep breath he took or shudder of his feet pounding on the tarmac, or that it might make him nauseous until he got used to the new fitness regime, but apart from a tiny bit of discomfort from the scar tissue pulling with the slight twisting of his torso from the regular movement of his arms pumping at his sides, it proved to be relatively pain free, no worse than when he was wheeling himself around in the chair. His ankle, however, was a different story.

He was very out of practice, so had decided a run-walk approach to start with would be the wisest option, building up his stamina over time. He would run for about five minutes, then walk for a minute, and repeat until he ran 5km, or was too tired to continue. After his second kilometre, his ankle was starting to ache pretty badly. By the third, he was forced to a stop by the shin splints shooting up his leg, the ligaments and muscles around his talus throbbing in time to his heartbeat as the entire limb protested against the punishment he was putting it through. He limped off the track to sit on the bleachers, slipping his trainer off to rub the joint, making slow, steady circles with his foot to try and ease the pain. 

_‘5km straight off the bat, even run-walking, was probably a little optimistic,”_ he thought. He’d need to rebuild the strength in the joint, maybe get himself an ankle brace to prevent further injury. At least he knew the physio exercises – he’d gotten lax at doing them while in the States, and that combined with sporadic rather than regular exercise meant he’d lost strength and flexibility. This was his reward.

He looked up at the sky, a couple of fluffy clouds floating by in a blue expanse that was otherwise clear. Technically, it was still winter, although you could argue that it was already spring judging from the warmth of the sun.

_‘It was very similar weather on that day too. Sunny but cool…’_

It was spring 1984. He’d had a pretty successful summer season the previous year. Provided Mizuno wasn’t competing against him, he had won most of his domestic competitions. If Mizuno was there, he would place second, although he had beaten him at previous events in the past when they were younger (and Mizuno was shorter). They’d both been to Kuwait for the Asian Athletics Tournament, but neither of them got through the initial heats. The two of them were now jockeying for position to compete at the Olympics that summer (in the end, neither of them qualified, and the more experienced Tomomi Takahashi represented Japan instead) and had a sort-of friendly rivalry going on, by which Eiji saw him as a rival to beat, and Mizuno would mock him for the areas he was lacking in, namely his height. The older he got, the more having the build of a junior high student became an issue as all his peers in the sport outgrew and outleapt him – technique can only get you so far.

He was determined to go as far as he could though. He would spend hours every day honing his fitness to a sharp point, becoming as fit and flexible as it was possible for a person to be. He would vault repeatedly, perfecting his jumps, getting the timings of his twists and turns in the air textbook. His coach at college would often berate him for doing too much.

“Ei-kun, you need to rest sometimes!” he would scold. “Take a day off! Your body will eventually break if you keep pushing it too hard!”

He’d ignored him.

He was starting to get disheartened at always being second best, Mizuno sniggering at him with that smug weasel face of his. He’d competed against him and lost that weekend, his barking laugh still echoing in his ears. It had got to the point where the sport was no longer enjoyable; he jumped because he needed to, not because he wanted to. Competition and being the best had become his life. He would hate himself progressively more when he couldn’t reach the dizzying heights he needed to, would push himself harder and harder, getting more and more frustrated at himself.

The morning of ‘the day’ he received news from his sister that his father’s condition had spiralled. He was being taken in for an emergency operation. All the more reason for him to become better; the family needed the money now more than ever, and he needed to make them proud, be the breadwinner, the golden boy… He HAD to start beating Mizuno! He needed to make a career out of this. He had no other choice.

When he had jumped in High School, the act of vaulting would clear his head. The feeling of flying was so freeing, so liberating, it quelled any fear or negativity for a few glorious seconds. In college, however, his insecurities and anxieties were that great he was unable to tone them out. Distracted, he fluffed his third jump of the day at practice.

He remembers the sprint. He remembers placing the end of the pole in the pit, taking off into the air. He remembers the pole slipping – he hadn’t planted it quite firmly enough in the pit, hadn’t given his lift-off enough oomph. He’d drifted sideways just slightly, the pole wobbling. He’d started to twist, hoping to still make it over the bar, but his momentum was messed up. He hit the bar, knocking it down, pivoting around it so his legs pointed downwards, and plummeted. He remembers hearing a nasty crunching sound, like someone snapping a small bundle of twigs, as he misses the mat and lands feet-first in the pit. And he remembers screaming as his coach and his college peers come scrabbling over to help.

Then things are a blur and he can only vaguely remember scans at the hospital, a cast being put onto his leg, crutches and well-wishers and endless physio appointments for weeks on end. Instead of earning money, he had cost his family more. Strangely, he remembers Mizuno himself phoning him to say he was sorry to hear of his injury, and for the first time in their rather tumultuous relationship the other boy had been civil, polite, and genuinely concerned about him, rather than the absolute prick he usually was. He’d said he hoped he recovered quickly, because he’d miss seeing him at tournaments. At that point Eiji realised he’d probably misjudged his rival’s intentions, that being an asshole was just his way of attempting to make friends. Mizuno probably even thought they were buddies already and that he was just teasing! They’d ended the call on good terms, although he never saw him again.

He vividly remembers being scared to jump again. Not that he was scared of injuring himself further – he was scared of failing. Pole vaulting had been his everything, the one thing he was good at and could contribute to society, something he could do to help his family and make them proud, but if he kept failing at that… what exactly was he good for? He hated himself more than ever for being such a coward, and he fell further and further into a depressive slump. He ran away, like he always did from a problem, but running away created more problems. What was he going to do now? If he didn’t vault, he’d soon drop out of college. He couldn’t see any other options available to him, and it wasn’t until Ibe invited him to America that a new door opened and he sprinted into it.

He never vaulted again until that fateful day in New York. It was simultaneously the most dangerous and also possibly the best jump of his entire career. He had no idea of the effect him vaulting, flying like a beautiful little bird over the wall to freedom, had had on Ash, that a single act of potential self-sacrifice had caused the usually stand-offish Lynx to fall for him and fall hard. Prior to that moment, Ash had just thought he was this cluelessly innocent tourist, a little weird and brazen maybe, kind-of cute but completely harmless, which was why he let him hold his gun. He’d saved him from Arthur, same as he’d have tried to save anyone innocent who got caught up in his shit, but honestly, if they hadn’t taken Skipper, he’d have probably just abandoned him. He’d been confused but grateful when Eiji showed him compassion, dressing his deeper wounds with cotton strips ripped from his shirt, but it was that brave leap into the unknown with the rusty drainpipe that cemented him firmly in the ‘must protect’ file.

That would also be the very last time he would jump.

 _‘And even then, I wasn’t able to make it count,’_ he thought miserably. He’d been unable to save Skipper and Ash had ended up in jail. If only he’d been a little quicker, a little stronger. If he hadn’t passed out in that damn phone box and wasted several precious minutes, the police could have been there faster. Skipper wouldn’t have been shot, Ash would have had no reason to chase Marvin, the entire thing could have been averted if he’d just been that little bit _better._ Him being there in the first place had been a hindrance. He was the reason the streetwise Skipper had been caught. He sighed, replacing his trainer over his sock, deciding that three kilometres was probably enough for his first day back exercising. It was also useless pondering what-ifs and potential scenarios for the past. He couldn’t change things now. He limped to the changing rooms to change out of his kit.


	14. Another Journey By Train

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ibe invites Eiji on a trip.
> 
> 'Another Journey By Train' - The Cure, 1980

Ibe phoned mid-November.

“Ei-chan? How are you?” he asked, the usual anxious note of concern in his voice. “How is the gunshot wound?”

“Hi Ibe-san. I’m doing well thank you. I still get some pain, and the doctors say I’ll probably have issues with heartburn for life, but the wound itself is practically healed. I’ve been discharged now, but I still have to go to physio for a while longer.”

“That’s good to hear,” he sighed. “That you’re better, that is. Not that you’ll have heartburn and physio.”

Eiji laughed, “It’s better than dying, I guess.”

“Yes… yes, certainly better than that.”

“So, where are you going on your next adventure?” Eiji asked. Ibe didn’t usually call out of the blue unless he had news or was going somewhere fun. “Are you coming to Shimane? Last time we spoke you said you’d try and visit.”

“Actually, that’s why I called,” he confirmed. “I’m not coming to Izumo this time, but I’m heading down to Hiroshima for a few days. My brother is going away on business with my sister-in-law for a couple of weeks, so I agreed to look after Akira. She has folded 1000 cranes in her spare time and wants to hang them at the Children’s Memorial, so I figured a trip to Hiroshima in autumn might be fun for the two of us. And Hiroshima isn’t all that far away from Izumo… maybe you could come and join us?”

“Hiroshima? I haven’t been there since middle school,” Eiji told him. He’d been there on a school trip. The whole year had visited the peace park and been to see the bomb dome as part of their history lessons.

“I’d quite like to go onto Miyajima island as well. I hear the trees there are very photogenic this time of year,” Ibe added. “But it would require climbing the mountain… so if you’re too busy or don’t feel up to it-“

“I want to come,” Eiji cut him off before Ibe could drown him under a blanket of pity. “I’m well enough to climb a mountain, as long as we take it slow. Besides, the doctor recommended walking as an exercise, and I’m able to run around a track just fine. I think I can manage.”

“With Akira’s little legs, slow is probably the only speed we’ll have,” Ibe chuckled.

“It’ll be great to see Aki-chan again,” Eiji said fondly. “I bet she’s grown quite a lot since I last saw her!”

“She’s six now, but has the attitude of a teenager already,” Ibe groaned. Eiji laughed.

“Sounds like we’ll have a lot of fun,” Eiji said. “When were you thinking of going?”

Ibe proposed a couple of nights the following weekend. He and Akira were getting a bullet train down on the Friday, and Eiji agreed to come and meet them on the train at Okayama station. He couldn’t guarantee being able to sit with them, but Ibe said he and Akira would be willing to move around so they could sit together. Eiji said it didn’t matter too much, as long as they were on the same train and arrived in Hiroshima together, he didn’t mind sitting by himself for an hour. The journey from Izumo alone would take three hours, so what was one more. Ibe said he would attempt to book them a room in a ryokan in Miyajima where it would be quieter for two nights, which gave them one day in Hiroshima, and one day on Miyajima.

“If you can pay your train fare, I’ll pay for your lodging and food. I understand money may be tight for you right now, and you want to save for college, but… if you’ll come assist me with some photography I’ll treat you to a weekend away,” Ibe told him.

“That’s very kind of you, Ibe-san,” Eiji said. Ibe had always been generous, especially towards him. “Thank you! I guess I’ll see you Friday at Okayama? I’ll give you a call if I have any issues.”

“I’ll see you there Ei-chan!”

***

Eiji arrived an hour early to Okayama station, which gave him plenty of time to grab a drink and a quick meal of tonkatsu from one of the station restaurants before the shinkansen arrived. The journey from Izumo had left him hungry and a little sleepy, so the portion of crispy fried pork loin with shredded cabbage and rice was much appreciated, perking him up considerably and settling his stomach. He had travelled light, seeing as they were only going for a weekend. He’d got a rucksack with a change of clothes, some toiletries, and his camera, the latter of which currently hung around his neck. He’d worn his sturdiest trainers and a waterproof coat in case of changeable weather, but anything he could likely borrow or rent in a ryokan, like pyjamas and towels, he’d left at home. He’d also brought some ofukuyaki – pan cakes similar to taiyaki in the shape of pufferfish - which he’d purchased near Izumo Taisha as a present for Akira. He figured she may enjoy the sweets and their unusual form. He liked them when he was her age anyway.

He went down to wait on the platform ten minutes early, which allowed him to buy a bottle of green tea at one of the vending machines before the train pulled in, practically silent as it glided along the rails like a powerful river dragon through a gentle stream. The doors puffed open and he let a couple of passengers off before he boarded himself. As he squeezed his way down the carriage, he heard a child’s cry call out to him.

“Okumura-san!”

Akira was waving at him with a huge grin, one of her front teeth cutely missing from her smile. She was kneeling on a seat backwards so she could lean on the headrest, dressed in her usual unisex way with a printed T-shirt and a pair of scruffy jeans, short hair mussed and boyish. Sat opposite her was Ibe-san, attempting to get her to sit down. It seems they had successfully secured themselves a window seat, and had swung some of the chairs around so they had four seats facing each other, although the train was fairly quiet so the fear they had that they’d be unable to sit together on the train had been unwarranted.

“Hey, Aki-chan! Long time no see,” Eiji greeted her, hefting his rucksack into the overhead rack before taking a seat next to her.

“That’s not my fault!” she sniffed. “You and Uncle Shun were in the States forever! I missed you!”

“I missed you too,” he smiled. “Here – I got you a present from Izumo! Don’t eat them all before dinner, alright?” He handed her the pack of ofukuyaki, and her eyes lit up.

“Hah! They look like pufferfish!” she squealed gleefully. “Thanks, Okumura-san!”

“Aki-chan, I’ve told you before – you can call me Eiji! I don’t mind!”

“Dad says I should always talk to my elders with respect…” Akira and her father had a little bit of a turbulent relationship. He had wanted a boy, and instead had been blessed with Akira. She did everything she could to please him, going so far as to dress like a boy and change her appearance, taking interest in more masculine hobbies. However, her father was really pushing for her to be a reserved and demure woman, as much as he hated the idea of having a daughter, and as a result Akira was a very confused child with the manners and speech patterns of a shy young lady and the boisterous energy of a rambunctious boy. When they’d first met, Eiji had actually thought she was male – it wasn’t until she spoke that it became clear she was female from the pattern of her speech. He’d apologised for assuming, and had asked her politely what she preferred to be referred to as – Akira immediately answered with ‘girl’.

“Well, alright then. You call me whatever you feel most comfortable with, but whenever you are ready feel free to drop the formalities, okay?”

“Okay, Okumura-san.”

“You’re looking well,” Ibe told him. “A lot better than when I last saw you anyway.”

“That’s not difficult considering last time I had a hole in me.”

“I guess,” Ibe shrugged. “Have you heard from you-know-who yet?”

“Ash? No.”

“Really? That surprises me a little.”

“That seems to be everyone’s reaction. He’s probably busy. Sing tells me he’s working with Max now, and he always was rushing around multitasking all the time,” Eiji said sadly.

“Yes, Max says he can be highly strung. He’s just as argumentative and sarcastic as usual, apparently, but he works harder than anyone Max has ever met,” Ibe nodded in agreement. Ibe himself thought the overly-intelligent blonde was a difficult entity to deal with on a good day, never mind all the time, but Max seemed to take it in his stride. From what the gruff journalist had told him, Ash had calmed considerably since leaving the streets, and was veritably throwing himself into his new job with a feverish fervour, writing and researching all day and well into the night. When he wasn’t working, he was childminding Michael. And when he wasn’t childminding, he was doing ‘personal study’, although Max hadn’t really elaborated on that. It wasn’t too difficult to imagine him being a perpetually busy person, maybe even someone who enjoys being industrious all the time, but what was a little depressing was that he had yet to find time in his hectic schedule to write his best friend even a short letter yet.

“I did say I would stand by him and trust in him whatever though,” Eiji said fondly. “So even if he never contacts me again, he knows that there is at least one person in the world on his side no matter what.”

“It’s still wrong that he hasn’t been in contact at all yet though…”

“It is a little upsetting, I’ll admit.” Eiji hung his head contemplatively. “After all that time we spent together, he can’t even find five minutes to just give me a call, or send me a note. I’m angry, if I’m honest, and I miss him. I should probably try contacting him again myself, but I don’t think it will do much good. I’m sure he has his reasons. He blames himself for a lot of what happened for one, and has this ridiculous notion that he’s dangerous to me, so maybe he’s distancing himself.”

“He’s a mysterious boy, that’s for sure!”

“You sure got that right,” Eiji sighed. “Ibe-san… I didn’t understand while I was over there. I didn’t understand my own feelings – it’s never happened before, so I just… I assumed I was into girls like everyone else. But, Ibe-san… You said on the flight back that Ash was my best friend, right? I thought he was too, but… the longer I’m away from him, the more I realise Ash was more than just a friend to me. It’s just tragic that I didn’t figure that out until I came home.”

“I did sort of suspect that,” Ibe admitted sheepishly, not looking Eiji in the eyes. “I could tell from the way you looked at him. You were happy when you were with him – far happier than I’ve ever seen you! It didn’t bother me that you might be… you know… I didn’t say anything though – I figured it wasn’t my place. But I was scared for you. If I could see it, so could others, and it made you a target.”

“Hmm…”

“These are yummy!” Akira broke the tension commenting on the ofukuyaki.

“They sure are!” Eiji agreed. “They were my favourite treat when I was your age!”

“Would you like one now, Okumura-san?” Akira offered him a fish.

“Aki-chan… I got those for you…”

“And I want to share!” she grinned. “You too, Uncle Shun! Have a fish!”

“That’s very kind of you, Aki-chan,” Ibe smiled, accepting a cake. Eiji also took one, a little reluctantly but he cheered up seeing Akira’s smile.


	15. Enola Gay

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eiji, Ibe and Akira visit the Peace Park and hang Akira's cranes
> 
> 'Enola Gay' - Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark, 1980

Conversation had swung onto happier topics by the time they reached Hiroshima. They would be unable to get into their accommodation until late afternoon, so they stored their bags in a coin locker at the station and hopped in one of the trams to the Peace Park. Akira had a plastic bag on her knee that rustled every time she moved. Peeking out the top were hundreds of colourful origami cranes, strung together with thick white cotton. At every stop, the trams would play a haunting jingle to alert passengers of their location. Eiji had heard transport jingles in many places, most of them upbeat or occasionally soothing, but he thought the off-key bells of the Hiroshima trams sounded sad, tragic, reflecting the history of the city itself.

They stepped off the tram at the Peace Park stop, right outside the ruins of the old town hall – the ‘Genbaku’ or ‘Atomic Bomb Dome’ as it was known now.

“Woah…” Akira murmured, looking up at the preserved wreck. The famous dome itself was skeletal and open to the elements, some of the walls partially collapsed. In theory, it should look much worse; the bomb had hit over 40 years ago, and without inhabitants or regular upkeep most ruins falter fast. However, it had been kept preserved in this state as a remembrance of the horrors of war, and the destruction caused by atomic weapons in particular. Looking at the remnants of the hall, Eiji could fully understand why the Russians and the Americans were always on edge about these things. Atomic bombs were evil.

“It withstood the blast, even though the bomb went off right overhead, because it was the strongest building in town,” Eiji explained to Akira, seeing her staring. “The strong support beams and the brick outer walls were able to withstand the explosion, but everything around it was flattened.”

“Talented builders,” Ibe murmured, holding Akira’s hand as they crossed the road and entered the park.

They made their first stop the Children’s Monument so Akira could hang her cranes. The statue stood tall and proud in the middle of the park, a child holding up a metal outline of a crane posed atop a three-legged abstract shape with a bell inside. Clinging to the outside were two more children, arms outstretched like they were taking flight. Around the statue were several plastic-covered alcoves, like bus stop shelters, and they were stuffed to overflowing with strings of cranes just like Akira’s.

“That’s a lot of cranes,” she said. “Is there room for mine?”

“I’m sure there’s space somewhere,” Eiji told her kindly. “Let’s go look for a gap, shall we?”

They went hunting for a spare inch in which to tie her cranes, while Ibe got his camera out and started taking photographs.

“It’s impressive how much origami is here!” Eiji said, amazed. “It must have taken hours of work to fold all these birds!”

“Okumura-san! I found space!” Akira called out to him from one of the shelters, beckoning him over. She pointed to the smallest of gaps on a wooden dowel just out of her reach. “I can’t get up there myself! Can you lift me?”

The doctor had advised him not to attempt heavy lifting for a while longer until he built up some strength. He could always offer to tie the cranes up there himself, but it wouldn’t be the same for her to have someone else install her hard work. Ibe wasn’t as strong as he was either, injured or otherwise – he wouldn’t be able to lift her that high for long enough. She was giving him the puppy-dog eyes… what is it with kids and eyes like that? Why couldn’t he say no to them?

“Alright. But you’ll have to be fast, okay?” he sighed. “You’re a lot bigger and heavier now than you used to be!”

“Okay!”

Eiji planted his feet as he stood behind Akira, took a deep breath to steel himself, hooked his hands under her armpits and hoisted her up. Immediately, his wound burned intensely, his core muscles screaming at him. He grit his teeth, trying not to shake too much, as Akira struggled to tie up the cranes.

“I can’t make the knot!” she moaned, while Eiji prayed to whatever deity would listen that she’d hurry up. “It won’t stay tight… It’s… oh! There we go! Okumura-san, you can put me down now!”

Eiji practically dropped her, exhaling and panting for breath, holding his stomach with one hand and biting his tongue so he wouldn’t swear. He’d be alright in a minute or two, he was confident of that, but… that had hurt.

“Are you alright, Okumura-san?”

“I’m fine,” he told her, composing himself. “I’m just… not as strong as I used to be. You got it tied up there good and tight, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. Let’s go find your uncle then. He’s likely wandered off somewhere with his camera.”

He hadn’t gone far; they found him underneath the peace bell, taking artsy upward shots of the huge gong.

“Uncle Shun – I hung my cranes! Okumura-san helped me,” Akira told him gleefully, running over to him.

“That’s fabulous, Aki-chan,” he replied, “Now everyone can come and see your hard work!”

“Yeah!”

“Every time I see a gong like this, I kinda want to ring it,” Eiji said, looking at the huge bell. There was a log hanging off two chains next to it, pointing at the side of the gong. A rope hung down that you would grab, pull the log back, and release it to chime the bell.

“Me too!” Akira said excitedly. “I bet it sounds really loud!”

“You can ring the Peace Bell,” Ibe told them. “It’s almost encouraged!”

“Wanna ring it together, Aki-chan?” Eiji asked her, pointing to the rope. She nodded, smiling, gripping the rope in her right hand. Eiji grasped it higher up and together they pulled the log back. “Ready… GO!” They let go of the rope, the log swung forward like a battering ram into the side of the bell, and a deep, melancholy ‘GOOOOOOOONG!’ echoed around the park. Akira laughed happily at the sound, but Eiji listened to it with a more stoic ear, remembering instead the reasons this whole park and memorial was here in the first place.

_‘So many people died here that didn’t need to… who exactly do you blame for those deaths? Our government, for starting the conflict and refusing to back down, even when the fight is lost? Or the Americans, for dropping a bomb they knew would kill hundreds, but who had no idea its lasting effects would be so devastating? I don’t think either side is a saint, really.’_

They went in the Memorial Museum to round off their visit to the Peace Park. Ibe started taking photos inside, snapping some shots of the replica bombs and the diorama of the city as it was, showing where the bomb exploded and the radius of the blast, but he stopped and put his camera away pretty quickly once they started looking at the exhibits proper, an oddly pale and melancholy expression on his face.

“You alright, Ibe-san?” Eiji asked him, noticing him ignoring his camera.

“This is… not stuff I feel I should be photographing,” he replied quietly. “This is history. It’s solemn, not a tourist attraction. Who am I to casually take photos of this stuff when so many people died?” He broke down entirely looking at the mangled wreck of a child’s tricycle, shedding a couple of tears. “It’s just… horrible!” he mumbled.

Even Akira was unusually quiet as they walked around the museum, staring for a long while at a preserved set of stairs from the old bank, where a distinct charred outline of an elderly gentleman could be seen. It looked like someone had painted a silhouette there, but Eiji knew that it was no painting. Several shadows of its nature had been found around the city following the blast, marking the final resting places of people who were likely instantly disintegrated where they stood by the explosion, a charred smear on the pavement or wall being all they left behind in legacy.

“This place is depressing,” he said to nobody in particular. “Interesting, seeing the darker side of humanity laid bare… but depressing.”

They left the museum in an undeniably pensive mood.

***

Ibe had booked them a ryokan on Miyajima island as promised, so around 4pm they went and collected their bags from the station and made their way to the ferry terminal on the tram. They boarded the JR ferry, and stood on the deck watching Hiroshima get further and further away as the ferry chugged the short hop over to the island.

“This makes me think of Staten Island,” Eiji said. “We have the city over there, and we have an island with a national monument on it.” He pointed to Miyajima, where the red torii gate of Itsukushima could be seen standing tall out of the ocean surf.

“The Japanese Lady Liberty,” Ibe nodded. “Just as iconic too, and considerably more ancient.”

Their ryokan was a short walk from the ferry terminal, overlooking the sea facing Hiroshima. He’d chosen a reasonably priced inn with Japanese-style rooms, all of them en-suite, which meant Akira wouldn’t have to go and bathe alone; he wouldn’t go into the bathroom with her, but Ibe would be within calling distance if anything went wrong. It also meant Eiji could have a private bath without people staring at his still-fresh scar, although he honestly didn’t care too much.

 _‘Let them stare,’_ he thought. _‘Japanese people are too polite to say anything, and they won’t suspect it’s a gunshot wound anyway. It’s not like I owe these people an explanation, and I’ll likely not see any of them again anyway. In Izumo, everyone who matters already knows.’_

Akira immediately lay on the tatami mats and rolled around on the floor when they entered their room.

“Holiday tatami are always sooooo different to home tatami,” she said by way of explanation.

“I guess…” Eiji agreed. He flopped down next to her. “Cool – the floor is heated!” he remarked, surprised.

“Don’t make yourself too comfortable down there, you two,” Ibe told them. “We have dinner in half-an-hour.”

“’Kaaaaaaaay!” they both said in unison.

Like many ryokan, this one provided breakfast and dinner as standard. The three of them enjoyed a varied kaiseki meal of local fish and vegetables, feeling satisfied and full by the end, retreating to their rooms tired from travel and ready to relax. Ibe let Akira have the first bath, then he had a quick wash. Lastly, Eiji enjoyed a long soak by himself. He nearly fell asleep in the bathtub, the warm water lulling him into a drowsy stupor. When he was finished, exiting the bathroom wearing one of the Ryokan’s jinbei, he found that one of the proprietors had been to their room and laid out futons for them. Akira was already in bed, starting to doze, and Ibe was sorting out camera parts for the morning, cleaning the components of his camera with a soft cloth and contemplating whether he needed his macro lens as well as a wide-angle one tomorrow.

“Need any help?” Eiji yawned, half-heartedly offering his services as an assistant.

“No, I’m fine,” Ibe said. “You, however, look shattered. Why not have an early night?”

“Mmm, I’m okay. Bath just made me a bit lethargic, is all.” He sat on the floor cross-legged opposite Ibe, rubbing his eye sleepily with the knuckle of his right pointer finger.

“Have you chosen any colleges to go and visit?” Ibe asked. “I’ve got some time off in new year, so I can come and support you.”

“There’s one over in Tottori I was looking at,” he nodded. “And a couple down Osaka way.”

“Oh! Osaka University of Arts does a really good photography course!” Ibe said

“It’s probably my top choice right now if I can get in,” Eiji admitted. “They have the option to study abroad in the final year too… provided I can get a visa by then.”

“Ah, yeah… the visas…”

“Have you heard any more news?”

“Well, the appeal failed, so unfortunately we’re bound by the law and have to face our punishment,” Ibe said grimly. “However, I did win some leniencies so our ban is nearer two-and-a-half years instead of three. If you’re starting college next year, then you should be fine to apply for a foreign visa again for your final year.”

“Sucks that the appeal failed,” Eiji muttered.

“I’m sorry, Ei-chan – I know you want to go back to New York!” Ibe said sympathetically.

“It can’t be helped,” he sighed. “You did your best, Ibe-san.”

_‘Wait for me, Ash… Even if you never write, even if everything changes and you move on, I’ll still come to you eventually… for closure if nothing else.’_


	16. Forever Autumn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eiji, Ibe and Akira visit Miyajima.
> 
> 'Forever Autumn' - Moody Blues, 1989

Miyajima is a truly beautiful place in autumn. The island is plastered in maple trees, which turn spectacular shades of red and orange when the seasons change, and carpet the mountain paths of Misen in crispy crimson carpets. They started their day by visiting Itsukushima after breakfast while the tide was still high, so Ibe could get some good photos of the torii gate in the ocean, passing the five-storey pagoda on their way. Eiji assisted Akira in picking a fortune paper or ‘Omikuji’ from the shrine, helping her shake loose a wooden stick from a hexagonal container to receive a number, and then removing a slip of paper from a drawer with the corresponding number.

“Oh – you got good luck!” he told her, reading out the fortune and translating the difficult kanji for her. “It says you will experience happy love with a foreigner in your future, and you will develop a love of travel!”

“A foreigner?” Akira wrinkled her nose, frowning slightly. “Where am I going to meet a foreigner?”

“Probably during your love of travel,” Eiji smirked, picking out a fortune for himself.

“What did you get, Okumura-san?”

“Great luck!” he declared, showing off the fortuitous little scroll of paper. He read his fortune to himself. Most of it was generic, congratulating you on your luck and naming a few lucky days and numbers. The rest was a cookie-cutter horoscope, but the last few sentences caught his attention.

_‘Your future is as golden as the dawn and you will be blessed with love within twelve months. Your lucky animal is a wildcat... Jeez, who writes this?’_

Eiji got a few shots of the gate for himself, and once both he and Ibe were satisfied they began their slow climb up the mountain. Signs dotted the path every few hundred metres, saying how long it was to the peak. Someone had a sense of humour; the signs were in English and read things like ’10 minutes to the cable car, 7 if run a little’. They took the cable car most of the way up, Akira in awe at the view from the glass-sided cabin.

“Look! You can see all of Hiroshima from up here!” she said excitedly, pointing at the glass.

Ibe, however, was more excited about the sea of red leaves just below them.

“The forest is really beautiful,” he commented, taking a couple of snaps.

The cable car got them most of the way up the mountain, halting at an observatory where tourists lingered and where you could buy snacks, but the summit itself was a further half-hour’s hike up a steep incline. Contrary to Ibe’s earlier prediction, Akira was very fast. She ran on ahead, nimble as a mountain goat as she skipped up the path. Eiji forged on behind her, a little winded by the effort of the climb, and Ibe puffed his way up at the rear, his smoker’s lungs working against him as he wheezed.

“You doing alright, Ei-chan?” he panted, concerned, when Eiji started holding his stomach with one hand.

“I’m good,” he replied. “I’m just a bit unfit. I’m determined though – I will conquer this mountain!”

“We can take a break if you need it? You’re a little out of breath…”

“Not as much as you, old man!” Eiji replied automatically, then immediately he realised what he’d just said and smacked a hand over his mouth apologetically. “Eeh, sorry, Ibe-san! I picked up some bad habits in America… ehehe!”

Ibe smiled. He was only six years older than Eiji, hardly a grandpa, but calling anyone with a decent age gap an ‘old person’ was a very Ash-like thing to do.

Akira waited for them at the summit. Eiji recovered quickly upon reaching the flat platform on the mountaintop, but it took Ibe several minutes to catch his breath, wiping his sweat with a handkerchief. Once he’d recovered enough, he busied himself taking numerous photographs of Hiroshima over the bay, and of the islands of Etajima and Kurahashijima. You could just about make out the shadow of Shikoku, hazy in the far distance over the Seto inland sea. He got some nice photos of Eiji and Akira too. Ibe had a habit of taking photos of people we was with without them knowing it – he was very good at it too! He’d already got some quick snaps of them at Itsukushima getting fortunes, as well as a couple at Hiroshima. Eiji had picked up the same habit for candid photography in America; it was the main way he had photographed Ash as, when Ash knew his photo was being taken, he tended to either get all embarrassed and stiff, would glare at the lens, or else would pose seductively and shamelessly just to piss him off. His previous bad experiences with cameras had made him uncomfortable with people taking casual photographs of him, but he seemed to tolerate and even enjoy when Eiji did it, probably because it was all done in innocence.

Ibe spent nearly an hour getting the perfect shots from the mountaintop, leaving Eiji to occupy and amuse Akira. They played I-spy for a while, which was interesting when you could see the contents of an entire city in the distance. Akira also taught him a clapping game similar to patty cake, only with a Japanese chant about making mochi. He faked not knowing the chant, which was a widely known children’s poem, but he genuinely didn’t know the clapping choreography. Generally, clapping games were what girls played. He actually enjoyed learning the moves, Akira complaining at him when he went wrong. She wasn’t the most patient of teachers.

They took a more leisurely stroll back to the cable car and returned to the town just in time for lunch. Ibe suggested they get some oysters, seeing as they were on Miyajima. Akira was keen to try them, but Eiji was not such a big fan. He’d tried oysters before and not been impressed. There weren’t many things he wouldn’t eat, but oysters were one of them.

_‘Ash used to really like them though… weirdo, they taste of fishy snot.’_

Thankfully, Ibe picked up on his reluctance and chose an oyster restaurant with a few other non-oyster choices on the menu. Eiji was able to get himself a conger eel rice bowl in preference to the many oyster dishes on offer, which had a marinated and grilled piece of eel on top of a generous helping of white rice and, like most Japanese meals, came with a small bowl of miso soup and some pickles. Ibe got himself a mixed set lunch menu with oysters prepared a variety of ways, and he ordered some battered oysters with rice for Akira, thinking her children’s palate may prefer cooked fish over raw.

“Fried oysters taste completely different to raw ones, Ei-chan,” Ibe said, trying to encourage him to try one. “Here, I have plenty! Have one!”

“No thanks…”

“They’re nice, Okumura-san,” Akira told him, showing up his picky eating habits by shovelling shellfish into her mouth.

“Then you make sure you eat them all Aki-chan,” he said.

After lunch, they went for a walk through the shopping district. They were able to try some Momiji Manju – little dough-cakes in the shape of maple leaves filled with red bean paste. Eiji brought a box to take home as a souvenir for his Mum and Kaori. The shop where they brought the manju was open-plan, so you could watch the makers at work crafting the little leaf cakes in well-used hot metal presses. It was fascinating, seeing them bake scores of the tiny cakes within minutes, flipping the presses full of batter and paste over hot grills. The shop smelt heavenly too, like sweet bread. Outside the shop was a huge paddle declaring itself to be ‘the world’s largest rice scoop’.

“It doesn’t look so big,” Akira muttered.

They finished off their afternoon walking around the coast, back past Itsukushima, to the aquarium. On the way, they were accosted by deer, who nibbled at their coat hems in search of food. One of them stole and consequently ate Ibe’s paper map, but thankfully Miyajima is small enough and so well signposted that a map isn’t really necessary. Escaping the deer, they arrived at the aquarium overlooking Mitarai river. It was a small aquarium, but there was a large variety of marine wildlife to see. Akira really liked the penguins and the sea lions, who did tricks in exchange for fish. However, all of them felt bad for the porpoises in their tiny pool. They actually looked bored, circling their tank repeatedly like a tiger paces a cage. However, while a cat will naturally scout out its territory in the wild, circling the boundaries and marking, albeit over a far wider area than a standard zoo enclosure, whales and dolphins do not.

“I wish they could be free,” Eiji said sadly. “They’re so smart, and they have nothing to do here except have humans gawp at them.”

“They’re still pretty cool though,” Akira said.

“I think I’d rather see them chasing after a boat,” Eiji told her with a melancholy smile. “That’s really cool! The way they jump out the water in the wake? Very cute!”

“Oh – I wanna see that!”

They left the aquarium as it started to get dark, returning to their accommodation to rest before dinner.

“It’s been a great two days, Ibe-san,” Eiji told Ibe gratefully, once again lying on the heated tatami. “I’ve had a lot of fun! Thanks for allowing me to come.”

“It’s good to see you up and about and resembling your old self again,” Ibe admitted. “I think Akira enjoyed herself too.”

“I like spending time with Okumura-san,” she said, laying on her back with her legs up in the air, kicking them back and forth. “He’s nice!”

“Aww, thanks Aki-chan!”

“Uncle Shun? Will Okumura-san be coming to your next exhibition?” Akira asked, rolling over onto her stomach.

“Exhibition?”

“Oh right – yes! Ei-chan, I’ve got an exhibition booked in Tokyo next year! It’s a fair way off, towards the end of April, but it’ll be of the photos I took in New York!”

“Oh wow – that’s awesome, Ibe-san!” Eiji said. “I’d love to come! You need any help? I’m still your assistant, after all.”

“If you can spare the time…?”

“I’m sure I can lend you a couple of days in exchange for food.”

“You are cheap labour,” Ibe laughed. “It’s a deal! I’ll let you know more details nearer the time.”

“Sounds good to me,” Eiji said. He smiled, wondering what sort of photos Ibe would choose to showcase.

_‘Maybe some of Ash?’_

***

They left on the train the following day. Before Eiji hopped out at Okayama, Ibe promised him that he’d come and visit in new year so they could visit some universities. Eiji said he would organise some dates in the meantime. He’d look around some himself, but any he was unsure of he would be welcome of Ibe’s presence and second opinion. He had a lot to think about and some hard choices to make, but he always felt calmer and more confident with Ibe – he was old enough that Eiji could turn to him for advice and draw from his wisdom, but young enough to be relatable.

Okayama station came all too soon. Akira cried as she hugged him goodbye, and he promised her he would see her again real soon.

“You promise?”

“Cross my heart,” he said, making the motion over his chest with a finger. “Be a good girl for Ibe-san, alright?”

“I will.”

“Take care getting home, Ei-kun,” Ibe said. “It’ll take us another few hours to get home ourselves, but ring me this evening to let me know you got back safely, alright?”

“You worry too much, Ibe-san,” Eiji laughed. “I barely contacted you at all in New York!”

“Yes, and you were kidnapped multiple times and then got yourself shot,” Ibe countered. “And you wonder why I worry – you are going to send me to an early grave!”

“I’ll be fine,” Eiji assured him.

OKAYAMA STATION. NOW APPROACHING OKAYAMA STATION.

“I better go,” Eiji said, standing and grabbing his bag from the rack. “I promise I’ll phone later.”

“Bye Ei-chan!”

“Bye-bye Okumura-san!”

“See you later!”


	17. I'll Be Missing You Come Christmas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eiji gets a (late) Christmas care package from Ash's Gang, but once again no word from Ash.
> 
> 'I'll Be Missing You Come Christmas (A Letter To Santa)' - New Kids On The Block, 1989

He received another care package from Alex and the gang just after new year. It seemed they had tried to send it to him for Christmas as a present, but had misjudged postage times. It was stuffed with festive treats from America, with lots of peppermint-flavoured candy, a chocolate Santa Claus (who had sadly gotten his head smashed in transit, but still tasted good), and a generous packet full of gingerbread. There was a new mix tape too, one with a note that said ‘ **Maybe this’ll remind you of the Boss’** with a winking face doodle. He placed the tape into the boombox on his desk to listen to while he read the letters inside, pressing play, and immediately finding himself personally attacked by Bon Jovi.

_SHOT THROUGH THE HEART, AND YOU’RE TO BLAME, DARLING YOU GIVE LOVE A BAD NAME…_

_‘Oh boy…’_

He checked the playlist crudely scrawled inside the case, wondering if maybe he had been obliviously obvious with his feelings and they’d sent him a load of love songs. He sighed in relief when he saw songs on the list included ‘Wild Boys’ by Duran Duran, ‘Kids in America’ by Kim Wilde, and ‘Roxanne’ by The Police. They had apparently picked songs that either featured gangs, guns, teenagers or, in the case of ‘Roxanne’, prostitutes. Still, the fact the very first song was a love power ballad had set his heart racing, and they were right; it did make him think of Ash.

He read Alex’s letter as Guns and Roses started belting about a paradise city where grass was green and there were pretty girls.

**‘Eiji,**

**Merry Christmas! We know Japanese people don’t really do Christmas like we do, but we thought we’d send you a present anyway – make sure you share with your sister. You gotta be kind to women and look after your family, Eiji, so give her a cookie or something from us. Bones has a bet with us that she’s cute as hell, so send us a photo!**

**Me, Bones and Kong are now in our new apartment. It’s in Upper East Side, which makes us feel real fancy ‘cause we can afford to live in Manhattan. We got a good deal – estate agent said someone died here, which put buyers off, but, like, we’re former street kids, so that didn’t really bother us too much. We’ve all lived in places where people have died. We talk to the ghost sometimes, should he exist, so he knows he feels welcome! I sent some photos of us in our digs – you’ll have to come visit when you come back!’**

There were three photographs, one clearly a selfie by Bones because his face dominated the foreground and he’d chopped off his chin and mouth, Kong and Alex clustered behind him, and a couch and TV visible in the background. There was another photo of the same room, just to show it off; it was plain, a little cramped, the furniture comfortable but utilitarian. It suited them. Alex had written their new address on the back for his reference. The last photo was from a housewarming party, judging from the fact they were all holding beer bottles and grinning. There were six people in the photo, Cain and Alex stood leaning on the back of the couch grinning, and Kong, Bones, Sing and… was that? It was! Ash was there, practically being throttled by Bones, sat squished on the sofa sandwiched amongst the others. He seemed to be having a good time at least – he looked well, albeit distinctly uncomfortable as Bones hugged him, stiff as a board, like he had frozen under the contact, but he still wore a happy smile. The fact Bones was able to touch him at all was an improvement.

**‘Kong has a job now. He’ll tell you all about it in his letter. Bones and myself are still looking, but honestly, running the gang is pretty hard work by itself! I dunno how Ash did it so well, but then he is a genius. Sometimes I doubt myself, but he keeps encouraging me and giving me good advice when we see him. He drops by maybe once a week to say hi. He’s getting a name for himself, apparently – he said he’s had loads of things published already. Not that I would know, I don’t read those fancy science journals. He’s changed since you left too. He doesn’t seem as mean? I dunno if that’s the right word – he wasn’t mean before, really, but he’s less edgy. I’ve known him for years but he seems softer now, a lot calmer and, dare I say, happy? But he misses you a lot. He talks about you often and always looks sad when he does.**

**I can see the gang disbanding before too long though. We’re all getting older, and a couple of the boys have already gone and settled down. We’re gonna be old men who just meet up at the Pig for drinks after work soon! All I hope is that the alliances Ash and myself forged can stay strong even after our era has passed. I think Sing will do well keeping Chinatown civil, and Black Sabbath will probably disband when Cain steps down, but I cannot vouch for anyone else.**

**Thanks for the assorted Kit Kats, by the way! I really liked the pink ones. What were they, cherry blossom? I dunno, whatever they were, they were nice. Bones asks if you can send Pocky next time? I’ve not heard of it, but he said he got some in Chinatown before? I’ll leave it up to you to figure that one out.**

**Take care in Japan – come join us old men soon, aight?**

**Alex’**

Once again, there was no correspondence from Ash, which saddened him a bit, but he was beginning to see it as par for the course. If Ash ever did contact him again, it would be personally, not through someone else. That was just the way he was. He had photographic evidence now that he was alive, at least. Eiji was beginning to think he might have to make the first move if he was ever going to keep contact with him, but there were several problems with that, the main one being he didn’t have an address for Max’s house. He could ask Ibe again, but the last time he asked him Ibe didn’t know either – Max had yet to send him his new address, and they tended to correspond with phone calls and an old post office box system anyway. Another alternative was to send him a letter via Sing or Alex, but he felt it would be unfair to make Sing deliver another letter, considering what had happened previously, and Alex only saw Ash sporadically too. He was starting to get concerned that maybe he wasn’t going to hear from him ever again though.

_‘When I can get a visa again, I am going over there and hunting him down! I’ll complain like hell that he never wrote!’_

Kong’s letter explained how he’d gotten a permanent job in construction, and was now in training as a forklift driver. He was very excited about it, judging from his wording. He said it was cathartic to use his strength for something constructive and worthwhile, rather than for protection or extortion. He had already made work friends on the site. Bones had done his usual thing of including an essay of scrawls, but the gist he got from the parts he could make out were that he was loving their new place and that he swears he saw the ghost once. He called it ‘George’.

Eiji figured it was probably about time he looked into getting himself some form of employment, especially if he was going to afford college. His wound was just about healed, although it still pained him if he overstretched or when the weather was wet or cold, but it was likely to be a problematic area for the rest of his life anyway. He’d been coping fine down at the track, and could now comfortably run 5km. Plus, he’d been volunteering to help Kobayashi-san out with his coaching, helping them set up and put away the lighter bits of equipment, and giving tips or pointers to the fledgeling kids making their first jumps. These charitable donations of his time would all make great CV fodder! Nibbling on a shard of Santa, he pulled a notebook out of the drawer in his desk and set about jotting down a draft CV.


	18. Workin' For A Livin'

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eiji gets a job
> 
> 'Workin' For A Livin'' - Huey Lewis and the News, 1982

He had sent several CVs into local businesses around Izumo, but the first to respond was a Lawson convenience store a short walk from home. They offered him an interview, so he dressed up smart, tucking a pale yellow shirt into a neatly pressed pair of black trousers, a suit jacket on top. He wanted to look presentable, but not -too- overdone, so he forgo the tie. He tried slicking his hair back, but he could never get it to sit quite right in that quaffed Bro-Flow Ash or Alex managed to tame it into when they helped style his hair as a disguise for him. Frustrated, he rinsed the pomade out, but he didn’t have time to shampoo it thoroughly, leaving him with a greasy wet-look even after he borrowed his sister’s hairdryer.

_‘Great…’_

Too late now. He hoped he could at least make it look intentional, and not like a failed squirrel nest. He’d probably look really stylish in a few years’ time when the 90’s mid-part curtain fringe came into style, but current trends were big hair and… big it was not! He scruffed it up a little, his natural fluffiness bulking it out until he looked like a shorter-haired Asian Bon Jovi.

_‘It’s even more of a mess than it was before! Urgh…’_

As first impression go, it wasn’t great. Maybe they’d find it endearing? His sister outright laughed at him when he returned her hairdryer, so probably not.

He sighed, resigning himself that he probably was never going to get this job in the first place, and he had plenty more opportunities to try elsewhere in the coming weeks.

There were four people at the interview, all boys aged between 17 and 25, and he would be the last they grilled. They sat in the back of the store at the break-room table, patiently waiting their turn in the manager’s office. The first was a nervous 19-year-old. He left ten minutes later, close to tears, and shuffled his way miserably out the fire exit. Next came a confident 25-year-old, who looked scruffy, like his very appearance was frayed around the edges. He slouched out with a pale face and a frown after twenty-five minutes of interview.

“She is brutal!” he warned. “Good luck guys! You’re gonna need it!”

The 17-year-old sat next to him met his gaze with a worried expression. He’d looked pretty impassive before, but now he looked like he was about to vomit. With shaky legs, he went to face his fate.

He lasted nearly 40 minutes. Eiji heard shouting coming from the office, a female voice raised in annoyance, and the teenager sprinted past him and out the door without so much as a goodbye. He gulped nervously. It would be his turn next. He waited a precious few seconds, making sure the manager had calmed somewhat, before standing, taking a deep breath, and walking in a stilted, stiff way into the office.

“Hello…” he said shyly, peeping in around the door.

“Don’t just stand there like a lost kid, dumbass – come in!”

She was wild-looking, her hair scooped back into a severe ponytail, and her narrow eyes blazing like fire, intense and vicious as they scanned him up and down. They reminded him forcibly of several of the gang leaders in New York. Sing had eyes like that, eyes that scanned you for threats, and he would squint to make himself look tougher. So had Cain and Shorter when they took their sunglasses off, eyes that were wary and harsh at first glance, judging and shrewd. Ash’s had taken it to a whole new level of severity – he didn’t just look at you; he looked _through_ you. He should have been shocked at being called a ‘dumbass’ and bossed around but, to his surprise, it barely phased him. He was almost used to it. His nerves actually fell a peg or two, and some of his confidence returned.

“I’m Masahiko Shuura. You can call me Shuura-san, or Boss. Your choice. And you are… Okumura Eiji, right?”

“Yes, that’s me.”

“Nice hair,” she growled.

“I, erm… had some styling issues this morning, and didn’t have time to fix it. I know it’s a wreck. It won’t be this messy if I worked for you, I promise!”

“There’s styling issues and then there is a desperate hamster bed, Ei-kun!” She switched automatically to familiar pet names, possibly in an attempt to demean him.

“I guess I was a desperate hamster,” he shrugged. Bantering with hard-as-nails people was something he was well practiced in. If they wanted to play cute, he could be a little shit right back! He caught the glint of humour in her eyes as they softened somewhat, but she remained stoic and grumpy-looking.

Her interview style was no-nonsense and bordering on rude, but Eiji was mostly unphased by it and answered her questions honestly. He could see that she would be intimidating to most; she carried herself in a masculine fashion, her presence filling the room and pressing down upon you as she tried to dominate. She was trying everything she could to intimidate him, but he found himself almost laughing at the irony. Compared to being eye to eye with Golzine, fighting for his life in a torture chamber against a tweaked-out Shorter, arguing with Yut Lung as he actively told him he wanted to hurt him, getting involved in shoot-outs and rescue attempts and guerrilla warfare… a job interview was nothing. He was that accustomed to dealing with Ash and his various moods, had watched him in action as he used the same tactics Shuura was now applying against him, that he felt his anxiety melt away entirely.

Shuura did not ruffle his feathers at all, and she could see that in his face. She seemed surprised, but also… happy? Pleased? Was this interview somehow, miraculously, going well?

“Tell me, Ei-kun… you seem remarkably calm? Why is that?”

“Well, Shuura-san… you kind-of remind me of some people I know. I dunno, I just feel like we might be good friends if you let me work here!”

He could practically see cogs whir in her head, as if she was thinking ‘what the hell kind of people does this kid know?’

“You’re not here to make friends, Ei-kun,” she replied huffily, but he could see he’d got to her.

“I know, but I find it helps,” he said.

Shuura stood up and made her way to the opposite side of the desk. Only now did Eiji find himself feeling a tiny bit afraid of her, some weird PTSD moment in his head flashing memories of being captured by Arthur through his mind. He peered up at her coyly through his long eyelashes as she held out a hand in a Western gesture.

“You’re hired,” she said.

“Really?”

“Yes. Now shake, before I change my mind!”

Tentatively, Eiji took the offered palm. She grasped his hand firmly in a bone-crushing grip and pumped it up and down a couple of times.

She had him fill in some paperwork, and she asked him what clothing size he was so she could get him some uniform ordered for his start date in a week’s time. She also introduced him to the staff on duty that day; all of them seemed friendly enough, but like Shuura had that no-nonsense edge to them. Eiji guessed that Shuura probably scared all but the hardier staff away with her attitude.

_‘It is exactly like a gang with a strong leader…’_

Right in his comfort zone then.

He was about to leave when Shuura pulled him aside a final time, curiosity obviously burning inside her requiring satiation. She held him in a kabedon against the wall, one arm planted next to his face to prevent him moving away, a final attempt at intimidating him. He glanced at her hand by his face curiously, before meeting her eyes again and staring at her disconcertingly with his huge childish orbs.

“Ei-kun, you sort-of remind me of my boyfriend,” she said. “He is one of only a handful of normies who isn’t automatically scared of me.”

“Normies?” he frowned.

“Non-gangsters.”

“Erm… I wouldn’t say I’m a-”

“I’m going to let you in on a little secret about myself. I try not to advertise this, but you intrigue me. Maybe you’ve heard of the Crimson Doves?”

“Wasn’t that a local girl biker gang? They were really big in the early eighties!”

“Correct. I was a member for eight years,” she said, sounding proud. “I rode on the back of my sister’s bike until I got one of my own, and then I earned wings of my own. I took over as leader when I was seventeen, and ruled for five years.”

“Wow! I should have known – my first impressions of you told me you were a good leader!”

Shuura blinked a few times, trying to comprehend what this mild-mannered little fella had just said. He was quite possibly the least threatening man she’d ever met, and he stood there, a serene smile on his cute little face, head cocked slightly to the side like a puppy listening, not even surprised or alarmed by her announcement. He’d just said she was a good leader. More often than not, people told her she was too ambitious, or too mean to her staff, but those who earned her respect she would treat fairly and protectively, covering minor mistakes and helping them get on in their career; those who crossed her, however, she showed no mercy to. The store had a huge turnover because of it. The staff that clung on the longest were either former rebels themselves, used to the hierarchy and recognising her as leader, or else they were that hardened and loyal to the company that not even Shuura could intimidate them out of the role, like old battle-axe Ito-san, who had been there over forty years, had seen several managers come and go, and wasn’t going to let some young upstart kick her out of her shelf-stacking position now. Eiji appeared to be neither of those things though. He was either very brave or very naïve, or some terrifying combination of the two, and just screamed ‘I’m nice, please protect me’. The last time she’d met anyone like him, she’d first threatened to beat the crap out of him, then started dating him, and now they were engaged and he cooked dinner for her most nights.

“You’re a weird one…”

“I’ve been told that before,” he replied. “Most of my friends in New York have told me I’m odd more than once.”

“Oh yeah, your CV said you spent some time in the States as a photographer’s assistant.”

“You never asked me what exactly I did out there, but I spent a lot of time with a couple of New York street gangs as part of a magazine project. I should have guessed you were probably a in a gang of some sort; you act a lot like one of my best friends. He’s a gang boss in New York.”

“Your best friend… is a New York gang boss…” she looked a little faint, uncharacteristically flustered by his words. New York gangs were notoriously rough – no wonder he wasn’t intimidated! She had an image in her mind of his friend being this big, burly, brick shit-house of a youth, every other word an English swear word. “Well then! You’re certainly… something.”

“I’ll see you next Monday then?” Eiji asked with his cutest grin.

“Yeah, sure,” she said, still sounding a little shell-shocked and releasing him from the kabedon. “Be here 9am sharp for your initiation.”

“Thank you again for giving me this opportunity,” Eiji said with a deep bow. “You won’t regret it!”

***

**‘Dearest Sing,**

**I didn’t end up working for the Yakuza, but looks like I’ve joined a rival gang anyway! I just got a part-time job in a convenience store. Have you ever heard of Lawson? I think they started in America, but they’re all over Japan. Anyway, I had the interview today and I passed! Yatta! I think it was just process of elimination though, because my new boss scared everyone else away. Her name is Shuura, and she told me she used to lead a Japanese girl biker gang. She tried to intimidate me as well, but Ash is worse when he gets angry. I think we’ll get along just fine! She seems nice underneath the layers of bravado…’**

He finished his letter in the usual fashion, chatting about things he’d been up to the last couple of weeks, interesting conversations he’d had, or places he’d visited that were out of the ordinary. He’d seen the wintering birds fly in, for instance, and had been to his final physio session at hospital, them giving him a clean bill of health. He would have to continue his gentle strengthening exercises at home for a while longer, but at least he no longer had to go back and forth to the clinic. The scar from his wound was finally starting to fade from angry dark pink to a paler, shiny white shade. He’d still have knotted, puckered skin over the entry site, but he had survived. He saw it as a badge of honour marking him as a fighter. 

**‘Happy New Year by the way! Chinese New Year is coming up too. Isn’t it the year of the rabbit this year? Are you doing anything special?**

**Have fun, whatever you do!**

**Your friend,**

**Eiji’**


	19. Camera

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eiji visits a college in Osaka with Ibe.
> 
> 'Camera' - R.E.M. 1984

Eiji had finally narrowed down his college choices to three. He could, in theory, have started this year, but he wanted to spend another year working to pay for his tuition and to recover fully from America, spending some much-needed quality time with his family again, before he leapt into anything massive. He visited one of his choices alone on a day off. It was a college over in Tottori prefecture, only an hour away from home meaning he could commute from Izumo every day if he went there. On paper, it sounded good. However, after visiting he found he wasn’t very impressed with the campus and its facilities, so he crossed it off his list. His second choice was in Izumo itself. He’d seen the campus often enough from the outside, and it was a firm second choice should all else fail. It was nice and local, and the courses were decent enough, but he knew there were better colleges elsewhere. His final choice was the Osaka University of Arts, the one Ibe had recommended. This was a little further afield, but they had a course he really wanted to do. He would need to stay in Osaka during the week, but he would come home some weekends and for holidays, and the course offered some flexibility to study from home part-time as well as abroad for his final year too. Shuura had already offered him a holiday cover position at work to earn a bit of pocket money should he desire it.

He'd called Ibe and arranged a visit at the very start of February, agreeing to meet Ibe at Shin-Osaka station. Kaori had begged Ibe to come back to Izumo again afterwards, and he had accepted her offer, hoping to catch the Setsubun-sai, or Spring Equinox Festival, in a place as religiously significant as Izumo and Matsue. She’d practically giggled when he’d said ‘yes’ – she liked Ibe-san a lot, regarding him in much the same way as one would a crazy uncle. She’d been incredibly jealous of Eiji when he went to America with him, although the jealousy quickly faded once she started getting an inkling of what he’d been through over there. It didn’t stop her from teasing him relentlessly for leaving her behind though.

“Imagine Ei-nii – if I’d gone to America too, maybe your Ash would have liked me more!” she’d taunted him.

“I doubt it,” he grumbled. “He doesn’t like annoying women much.”

“What? I’m not annoying!”

“Hate to tell you this, dear sister of mine, but you are!” he’d said, and then stuck his tongue out childishly. She’d retaliated by throwing a cushion from her bed at his face, which he ducked, laughing, and retreating from her room.

He met Ibe as agreed at Shin-Osaka station. He had set out early that morning, waking up at 5am for the train. Osaka was a 5-hour journey, with a change at Okayama.

_‘Always Okayama from here…’_

They hadn’t booked a hotel, seeing as the visit would only be a few hours maximum, so he would make the journey back with Ibe-san later that day. Ibe had set out at a similar time to arrive from Sendai, so they were both pretty tired when they met outside the ticket barrier. Eiji perked up once they got chatting and boarded the bus, discussing the course he was looking at with Ibe, and the older man listening and giving his two yen where it was appropriate.

“I’m still not sure about this place,” Eiji told Ibe as they rode the local bus to the campus. “It’s just… further away from home than I’d like right now.”

“And New York wasn’t?” Ibe reasoned. “Plus, you want to study abroad in the future anyway! It’s like you’re always trying to get away from home.”

“I guess…”

“Ei-chan, I do understand why you want to be near home. You feel guilty you were away for so long, yes?”

“Mmm…”

“But you are also an adult, and this is your future. It isn’t like Osaka is on the moon – you can use the train at any time to get home!”

“You can fly too, if you travel light. There’s a daily service.”

“There you go then!”

“I’m going to reserve judgement until we’ve had a look around.”

The bus rounded a corner, and they got their first view of the campus; a large concrete and glass building, modern in design, the campus grounds liberally peppered with trees and greenery. His first impression was favourable, at least. Tottori had been bleak, like a soviet town of block-concrete dated buildings, but here was fresh and new, the buildings bright and spacious. Ibe rang the bell on the bus for it to stop and they disembarked.

“So where do we need to go?” Ibe asked him, as Eiji dug some paperwork out of his messenger bag.

“I was told to head to the reception offices, and ask for a Kondo Setsuka-san…” Eiji squinted at the map, then looked around to try and orient himself. “Oh! There – a sign for guest reception!”

They followed the sign, walking down a wide boulevard past college buildings and lush green grounds. It was certainly a pleasant and spacious place to study at, but just because a place looked nice didn’t necessarily mean it was any good. The students they saw in passing seemed happy though. They eventually came to a door marked as ‘Visitors’ and stepped inside. A receptionist greeted them.

“Hello, welcome,” she said politely, smiling.

“Erm… Hi. I’m Okumura Eiji… I was told to ask for Kondo Setsuka-san?”

“Okumura…. Eiji-san….?” She murmured to herself as she leafed through paperwork on the desk. “Oh – found you! You’re a little early. I’ll give her office a ring, see if she’s free.”

The receptionist picked up a phone, and there were a few moments of silence as she dialled and waited for an answer. After an unfathomable length of time, a muffled ‘Photography Department’ could be heard from the handset, spoken in a deep female voice.

“Kondo-san? It’s Mitsuko here, at the front desk. Okumura Eiji is here to look around.”

“Oh! He’s early! I’ll be there in a moment!”

Mitsuko hung up the phone and relayed, “She’ll be here shortly.”

“I can’t help but feel that the name ‘Setsuka’ is familiar…” Ibe murmured to himself. He found out why soon afterwards.

“Shunichi? Ibe Shunichi? Is that you?”

A thin lady in an oversized navy shirt and slim-leg black trousers strode into the reception, short hair in a gently waved bob, light make-up highlighting her almond eyes. She spoke with a pronounced Kansai accent, her voice deep for a lady, and jolly. Ibe’s eyes widened as he recognised her.

“Fukuda-san?”

“I go by the name Kondo now,” she corrected him. “I got married two years ago. How are ya – you makin’ money? I’ve not seen ya since college! Do ya still paint, or are ya purely into photography now?”

“Just photography, really. I haven’t done any oils in a while.”

“I see yer work in the magazines sometimes – it’s sure impressive!”

“Oh, thanks, but… it’s nothing special…”

“You don’t give yourself enough credit, Shunichi!” She hit him lightly on the upper arm in a friendly way. Clearly, she and Ibe had been acquaintances at some time. She used his first name like a friend would, her dialect carrying a strong Kansai lilt. “What brings ya here of all places?”

“Ei-chan is my assistant,” Ibe explained, beckoning Eiji forward. “Ei-chan, this is Fukud- I mean, Kondo Setsuka. We were in college together!” That might explain why Ibe knew so many Osakan idioms, if he’d been studying alongside a local. It wasn’t just from watching too much TV.

_‘And then he taught them to Ash like they were normal… heheh…’_

“A pleasure to meet you, Kondo-san,” Eiji told her, bowing politely. “Please treat me kindly!”

“No need to be so formal, Eiji – can I call you Eiji?” Eiji nodded that yes, it was okay to use his first name, “Any friend of Shunichi is a friend of mine!”

“He’s helped me on several assignments, and he came with me to America. He’s looking to study photography formally, since his previous career choice fell through,” Ibe explained.

“I was an athlete,” Eiji said sheepishly, “But I got injured and couldn’t continue.”

“That’s a shame… wait… were you that pole vault kid Shunichi got his panties in a twist over in his final year?”

“Erm… yeah… that was probably me…” Eiji blushed.

“I should prob’ly thank ya then, for getting his sorry ass on the right track. It’s not that Shunichi is a bad painter, but he was goin’ nowhere with that brush. He always was happier with a lens,” she said. “And he got that big break with those sportin’ photos – got scouted by several magazines, rest was history!”

“Eiko left me when I stopped painting though,” Ibe said, grimacing. “She sided with my father, said I was wasting my talent.”

“Wastin’ talent?! Uch! Eiko-chan missed out on a good thing,” Setsuka said, waving a hand from side to side dismissively. “Anyway, ya wanna study here at Osaka? I highly recommend our department – follow me, I’ll show ya the ropes!”

Eiji and Ibe followed Setsuka into the bowels of the campus, down a brightly lit corridor and into a studio.

“This is just one of our studios, we have several, and they’re all modern. We provide backdrops, lighting, all sorts of props and fixtures. We also have contracts with modelling agencies and several local volunteers for shoots should you need a model.”

“It’s certainly well laid-out,” Ibe said, examining an umbrella light.

“We have numerous dark rooms as well, and have started to reach out into the digital world,” she explained. “It may be a fledgeling form of photography now, but I have a feelin’ digital will be big in the future. We have two digital cameras for students to use, and a state-of-the-art computer for editin’.”

“Computers?” Ibe frowned, “That’s not photography…”

“I think it’s exciting,” Eiji said. “Just because you can’t use a computer, Ibe-san.”

“I could learn!” Ibe muttered, “I just don’t want to.”

Setsuka showed them another studio, this one currently being used by a handful of students. They were taking photos of a bowl of fruit on a podium, trying out different lenses and lighting to get a better effect. Setsuka whispered that they were first years and Arakawa-sensei had set an assignment to make something benign look sinister. They’d got red-tinted spotlights pointed at the fruit, long shadows cast on the paper backdrop behind it. The fruit itself had been arranged as such so the shadow looked like a demon, with a banana forming its horns. A couple of them who weren’t too busy introduced themselves to Eiji; they seemed nice enough people, all smiles and positive energy. By the time he started here, they’d be third years and his senpais… it felt a little odd to him that these kids three years his junior would be ‘senpais’, but that was one of the issues with being a mature student. The positives were that he had several years of life experience and had already worked out in the field, so they may be ‘senpai’ for having started the course before him, but he still had the wisdom and experience of age.

She showed them the row of offices that the photography department staff occupied. A couple of the sensei sat inside, doors open, and they waved in greeting as they went by. Setsuka also explained that they had access to the art studios of the other subjects as well, when necessary for a project, and some of the modules studied were crossover with other departments and degrees.

“We often collaborate with the sculpture and modern art students, for instance,” she explained. “And some of our students do other types of art besides photography. One of them used her photographs to make a collage for modern art a couple of years back.”

“Makes sense,” Ibe nodded.

“Student accommodation is available on site,” Setsuka said, leading them past one of several blocks of flats. “Mature students have their own block over by the gymnasium. On site facilities include an outdoor track as well as a sports centre, a student bar, and a restaurant. There are several societies ya can join too, and I would encourage ya to look into one – Photography society is always holding events, but there’s several sports societies if that’s more yer thing, or, well, anythin’ really!”

“It sounds brilliant!” Eiji told her. “I really like what I’ve seen. It’s given me a lot to think about.”

“Kondo-san was one of the best on the photography course at Nihon University – she’ll teach you way more than I ever could,” Ibe assured Eiji.

“Well, if you vouch for her, Ibe-san…”

“Take some time to think it over, Eiji. It’s a big decision, so I understand ya reluctance,” Setsuka said kindly.

They spent a couple of hours looking around at the facilities before saying farewell to Setsuka and catching the bus back to the station.

“I hope to see ya again in the future, Eiji,” she had said, shaking his hand the western way with a firm grip when she saw them off campus. “And Shunichi – don’t be a stranger, kay?”

“She seems nice,” Eiji had said to Ibe afterwards as the bus trundled back into the city.

“She was friends with my ex-fiancé, although she was a lot younger than Eiko,” Ibe said. “We got on well though, and she’d hang out with the boys and myself occasionally at the student bar. Sometimes, she’d come play Mahjong.”

“Ibe-san… I think I’ve decided,” Eiji said, expression determined and eyes glittering. “It might be a little further away from home than I’d like, but… I want to study here.”

“I think you’ll do very well under Setsuka’s tutelage,” he responded, smiling.

***

“IBE-SAAAAAAAAAN!” Kaori welcomed Ibe loudly when they walked in the front door.

“Ooow, Kaori! You don’t need to yell!” Eiji scolded her.

“It’s not fair you get to hog Ibe-san all to yourself, Ei-nii,” she responded sniffily. “I want a life-changing pilgrimage with Ibe-san!”

“It’s been a while Kaori-chan,” Ibe said. “I never had chance to talk to you much last time, did I?”

“I had mid-terms coming up,” she shrugged. “This idiot just had to get himself shot at the most important part of my school year! It couldn’t be helped.”

Eiji always liked when Ibe stayed. Not being the only man in the house was refreshing; sometimes, he felt like the all-female household were constantly ganging up on him, although since his grandma had passed on the effect had lessened. The only problem…

“Oh Shunichi, you’re so funny!”

His Mum would flirt like hell with him. Thankfully, Ibe either never picked up on her cues, or he chose to ignore them. Eiji knew his ex-fiance had been several years older than him, so he did have a soft spot for older women, but his mother was maybe just that bit -too- old for his preferences. Alternatively, Ibe was honouring her status as a married woman, and the mother of his younger friend. It used to bother Eiji immensely, and he’d had several arguments with her about it, basically saying that Ibe was his friend, he was too young for her, she was shameless, she was married and acting like a whore… Now though, the word ‘whore’ carried more weight, and even before meeting Ash he’d felt terrible for calling his mother names. After his time in America, added to the conversation he had had with his father about lust and love, Eiji was a little more understanding of his mother.

He still didn’t like it though. There was still that niggling thought that maybe, while his Dad certainly loved her, did she only tolerate him? She was taking advantage of him not being home to play the field a little, that was for sure. 

_'I doubt I'll ever understand completely...'_

Ibe stayed over for three nights. He went to the bean throwing ceremony at Izumo Taisha with Kaori the following day. Because Eiji had a shift at Lawsons that afternoon, he couldn’t go, but Kaori promised they would throw some beans over the threshold when he got home that evening. The shrine handed out small portions of roasted soybeans for participants to take home to purify their own living space, so she and Ibe would bring some back with them and they could practice mamemaki – bean scattering – while declaring ‘Oni wa soto! Fuku wa uchi!’ (Demons out; fortunes in) before slamming the door. Kaori thought it was hilarious to push Eiji outside, calling him a demon, and slamming the door in his face while roaring with laughter, Eiji shouting at her in annoyance, banging on the door and insisting she open it. Kaori had also brought Ibe into the shop after the ceremony to show him where he worked. Eiji had vanished into the stock room when Mazda-san tipped him off that his sister had come in; she liked to wind him up when he was at work, so he tended to avoid her. He apologised to Ibe later for abandoning him, but Ibe was just happy to know where he worked.

“Might come in useful someday,” he had said.

Before he went home again, Ibe gave Eiji the dates of his upcoming Tokyo exhibition.

“It should be a good show,” he said. “I’ll understand if you can’t get the time off work though.”

“No, it should be fine – I have five rest days that coincide with it anyway,” Eiji said, grinning excitedly. “I can come help you set up at least. I wouldn’t want to miss your New York exhibits!”

Unfortunately, life doesn’t always work out the way you hope, and his plans would make a sudden change for the worse almost overnight.


	20. Fade To Black

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eiji's father passes away. A short but poignant chapter.
> 
> 'Fade To Black' - Metallica, 1984

The last time he saw his Dad alive genuinely terrified him.

He was hooked up to several machines which beeped and wheezed rhythmically. Tubes and wires stuck out from multiple places; a ventilator forced air through an intubated tube down his throat, another tube drained urine through a catheter, the bag’s contents an unhealthy brownish colour. Several sacks of medication trailed into an IV, and a fluid drain poked disconcertingly from his abdomen, feeding out of a small hole incised into his midriff. His skin was pale, but stained with a sickly deep yellow shade.

For years, doctors had been saying his only chance was a liver transplant. However, his Dad was a rare type; a match would be difficult to find and, sadly, one had not been sourced. Eiji and Kaori had both been tested to see if they matched early on, but neither of them did. Nor did any surviving family from his side. Now, he was too sick to survive the surgery. They had switched to palliative care and, after his condition had spiralled overnight, had given him days rather than weeks.

Eiji was here to say goodbye. He had come alone. His Mum was at work and Kaori at school, but being in the house alone knowing his Dad was on his way out, lying in the ward with nobody beside him, maybe scared as mortality edged ever nearer, had been too painful for him to bear, so he had come to the hospital instead. He sat at the bedside in an uncomfortable moulded plastic chair, holding his hand lightly and leaning onto the mattress.

“I’m sorry, Dad,” he murmured quietly. “But… it’s alright. You don’t need to stay here suffering.”

He got no response. The machines just bleeped at him, a rattling puff of air inflating his father’s lungs with a struggling hiss.

“We had some good times. I’ll miss you! We all will! But… if you want to go… Please… We’ll be OK.”

No movement, no indication he had heard. Just mechanical medical sounds.

Eiji sighed sadly, stroking a thumb over his frail saffron-hued hands, feeling the prominent bones and deep blue-green veins under the thin skin. A saying he had once read in America floated into his mind.

_‘If you love someone, let them go.’_

“I don’t want you to leave…” he whispered. “Not really. But… I realise you have to. Everyone moves on eventually... I love you, Dad. And that’s why you have to leave us. I can’t stand watching you suffer.”

He paused, trying to drown out the sounds of sickness around him.

“I’m sorry I was away so long. I feel bad about that. You probably needed me, and I wasn’t there, but… to me, you always seemed strong. You’re my Dad, my rock, and at that time there was someone else needed me more. After our talks recently, I think maybe you understand that. I’m not asking forgiveness. I’ve been a terrible son. I’m here now though. I’m here when you need me the most. You’re not alone.”

He stayed with him for the next two hours until a nurse came and told him to leave. He sensed deep inside, some instinct or premonition telling him that this would be the last time they spoke. He didn’t say goodbye as he left this time, no casual ‘see you later’ or ‘take care’.

He said ‘Sayonara’.

He would be the last visitor to his bedside.

The phone rang loud in the quiet of the household in the early hours of the morning. He awoke with a start, knowing the news wouldn’t be good. He heard his mother shuffling around, rolling out of bed with a creak of springs, stumbling down the stairs to the table in the hallway to answer the call. He left his own bed too, met Kaori on the landing, wiping sleep from her eyes as they stood side by side at the top of the stairs, listening. He reached out, taking her hand in his own, gave it a gentle, reassuring squeeze.

“Yes… Yes… OK... Yes… We will, thank you… Thanks for everything…” their Mother sighed heavily.

His father had passed away.


	21. The Living Years

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eiji deals with the aftermath of his father's death. 
> 
> 'The Living Years' - Mike & The Mechanics, 1988

The next couple of days seemed to whirl by in a kaleidoscope of dull emotion and petty tasks. His mother still had to work; her 12-hour shifts meant she was unable to organise things during the day, and come the evening she was too tired. Kaori had school, and she cried all day in the nurse’s office instead of going to class, turning up purely to keep her attendance record clean, Hiyoko sat with her hugging her. Eiji also had work, attending his shifts as booked but, because he was part-time, he still had spare hours in which to make phone-calls and run errands.

He took it upon himself to organise his Father’s funeral. The first thing he had done upon hearing the news, after hugging his sister while she broke down in tears, was to close the doors on the Butsudan in the living room, sticking a white piece of paper over them to ward off evil spirits as was the custom. They would be reopened after the funeral, and a photo of his father placed on the shelf inside. Over the next couple of days, he informed all their friends and family of his passing, spending a whole afternoon on the phone and writing letters to far-flung estranged relatives. He sorted the death certificate, hired priests for the final blessings and booked slots at the crematorium and a local temple for the wake. Throughout it all, he remained impassively stoic. He didn’t cry, he didn’t complain, he didn’t get angry or upset. He just did what was necessary, blocking his emotions into a deadpan silence. If anything, he felt numb, hollow. It was easier to cope that way.

Shuura voiced her concerns at work a couple of days after his passing.

“Ei-kun… Why don’t you take some time off?” she suggested. “We can cover your shifts. Sarada can take most of them, and Kaiichi the rest. I know things must be hard for you right now.”

“No. I’m fine. Really,” he responded, in a voice that said he was anything but fine. “I need to work, Shuura-san. Please, just let me come in, even if you don’t want me manning a till or talking to customers. I can organise the stock room, stack the shelves, clean, manage the inventory and accept the deliveries… I need to keep busy.”

“Ei-kun...”

“I can’t sit at home all alone right now,” he whispered. “That… that would probably break me.”

“Alright, Ei-kun,” she said sympathetically, smiling at him wanly. “You’re my star underling, so we can’t have you failing on us now. Just let me know when you need time off, alright? We’ll work something out.”

“I need three hours off for the wake,” he said. “Next Tuesday. I’ll come in afterwards for the rest of my shift. I’m already rest day the next day for the funeral.”

“I’ll book you off the whole day,” Shuura nodded.

“No!” Eiji pleaded. “Just… three hours. That’s all I need.”

When he finished his shift, he came home to a house that was still empty. Kaori was at their aunt’s after school with Hiyoko. They had had an argument the previous day, and she was now pointedly avoiding him. Eiji wasn’t sure if it was avoidance because she was angry at him still, or angry at herself for what she’d said. Her words had stung, cutting deep and making him question his very morals and psyche.

“You are so emotionless, Ei-nii! The hell is wrong with you! Dad just died and you haven’t cried at all! You’re like a fucking robot! Did you leave your emotions in America or something?! You cried often enough about that Ash person!”

She had a point though. Usually, he cried like a baby at the smallest of things. In America, sometimes he felt like he did nothing but cry! He cried just thinking about Ash’s childhood, the abuse he had suffered, the way he was disillusioned with life and found it hard to trust anyone… he cried when Shorter was forced to take Banana Fish, cried again when he died, had cried again several times since when he thought about how it was all his fault… everything was always his fault… He had cried when Ash was stabbed by Arthur, when he thought he was dead, and then again when he found out he was alive. And he had cried when he said goodbye, cried again on the plane over here, for a couple of months he had cried whenever he thought of him, of how he couldn’t see him. But he had gone off the radar, radio silence and no contact, and the tears had dried up as the weeks rolled by. It was almost as if he had wept out all his allotted tears and there were no more left to spare.

Sayonara.

 _‘Fuck that word…’_ Eiji thought bitterly. _‘Fuck that one word and everything it stands for!’_

He climbed the stairs to his bedroom, legs leaden and heavy as he dragged himself up. The most infuriating thing about his father passing was that his personal emotions seemed skewed in a strange way. He had fully expected he would be really sad and, like Kaori, unable to stop sobbing, but he just wasn’t. He was upset, that was natural, but overruling everything he felt a blanket of relief that, after several years, his Dad was finally out of pain and probably in a better place, or reincarnated as something amazing. He also felt strangely free, like the one thing holding him down to Izumo was gone. Those feelings brought with them the dark tendrils of guilt and shame and self-hatred. He should not feel happy that someone died; that was just wrong. It was his Dad for pity’s sake! So he had blocked his feelings, fogged them out with that numb, utilitarian emotion of nothingness that allowed him to keep going.

He closed himself off in his room, plonked himself down heavily at his desk. Not wanting to be completely alone he opened one of the drawers and pulled out a fresh piece of paper. He plucked a pen from the pot on the top, clicked it active, and started to write.

**_‘Dear Sing,_ **

**_I am glad you are doing well and that Yau-Si has finally settled down. It sounds like all he needed was a friend all along. I am sure the two of you will go far. I do not think I can ever bring myself to like him personally though, after what he did… I really want to forgive him but I cannot forget such cruelty…’_ **

It was comforting knowing he had at least some friends on the other side of the world he could still contact. Sing may be younger than he was, but he was wise in many ways. Maybe the young Chinese boy could shed some light on his emotional state, or offer some words of advice or comfort. He lived in a world of death, and he had lost close family as well. Of course, there was one other person who may understand his feelings… someone who had cared for and watched their older brother suffer… but contacting _him_ over this was out of the question. He still didn’t know where to send the letter anyway.

**_‘Unfortunately, life for me has taken a turn for the worst. You remember I told you my Father had liver problems? He has been in hospital for many years now, while I live in a house of ladies. One of the reasons America was so great was that I could act like a boy for once. Well, his condition got worse. Doctors did what they could but he passed away two days ago._ **

**_I am at a bit of a loss for how to react. My sister will not stop crying, but my Mum has just been quiet. I am not sure how I feel. I am wondering if I got desensitised to death in America. I feel sad, but I also feel like I should feel worse than I do. I honestly do not know. I am the one organising the funeral because Mum has to work full-time, so maybe I will feel differently afterwards...’_ **

Sing would normally keep him updated on what Ash was doing too, although he really didn’t know much. Since Ash had stepped down as gang leader, Sing didn’t see him as often. Alex claimed he was doing well, but nobody actually knew what he was doing other than writing. Sing had asked in his last letter if Ash had been in contact yet, probably annoyed that he constantly asked what the Wildcat was doing. He claimed he had told him multiple times to write now, but Eiji was starting to lose hope that they would ever reconnect. It had been more than half a year. He wanted to put his faith in him. He wanted to be that one person who believed in Ash unconditionally, but…

Maybe it was time to relegate Ash Lynx to his memories?

<“If you love them… let them go…”> he sighed.

_‘I can’t just do that though. I won’t. Not yet.’_

**_‘In answer to your question, no, I have heard nothing from Ash. I am sure he has his reasons. He always was a busy person._ **

**_I will write again soon. Keep up the hard work with Yau-Si._ **

**_Eiji.’_ **

*******

Members of family he had not seen in years appeared for the funeral, as well as several of his father’s old work colleagues. A couple of the neighbours came, as did Kobayashi-san to support his old students in their time of need. Kaori spent the whole ceremony crying with Hiyoko, and Eiji got tired of hearing the same hollow condolences spoken to him over and over for his loss. He politely bowed to those who spoke to him, but after the first few he no longer paid much attention to the shallow words spoken and just thanked them on autopilot. His mother received so many koden bukuro that they were able to afford the funeral, wake, a generous blessing, and maybe a month of living expenses afterwards on top of it. Eiji had no idea his father was that popular, although he had always known he was a good person.

Ibe made a flying visit from Sendai, hurrying down for a brief overnight stop before rushing back to Tokyo for his exhibition.

“This is bad timing,” Eiji lamented to him outside the temple following the funeral. “I really wanted to come and help out, but…”

“Ei-chan, don’t you worry about it,” Ibe said sympathetically. He placed an arm around his shoulders and gave him a gentle squeeze of solidarity. “You have more important things to do here. Your mother told me you organised the funeral yourself. That must have been difficult.”

“Not really,” he said despondently. “The priests do most of the work.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Ibe said, frowning slightly. “Ei-chan… are you doing alright?”

“Ibe-san… I…”

He wanted to tell him. Wanted to say he was sad and angry and confused all at once. He wanted to scream, wanted to curse the gods and ask why they liked to toy with him. He wanted to cry for his Dad and he couldn’t and he had no idea why. He felt guilty about the relief, and ashamed of himself because he had told his Dad to go and he actually had. He was angry at himself and irrationally angry at the universe, but none of those emotions could escape his subconscious. They fought and roiled inside him like a storm, but the only thing he truly felt was a cold numbness, a familiar blanket that he used to cope through difficult times.

The last time he felt this empty had been just before Ibe suggested he come to America.

“I’m okay, Ibe-san.”

He waved Ibe-san off at the station following the funeral, and then went to work as he had promised Shuura he would. She took one look at his face and put him to work in the back office organising the stock and accepting deliveries.

“You should go home, Ei-kun,” she told him, leaning against the back office door. “You don’t need to stay here. Look – I’ll give you a free paid day of leave! Sound good?”

“No thanks, Shuura-san. I want to work.”

He threw himself into his job over the next few days, keeping himself busy with mind-numbing repetitive tasks to soothe his scrambled thoughts.

 _‘It’s better not to think at all sometimes,’_ he thought drolly. ‘ _Thinking just causes problems.’_


	22. Here Comes The Rain Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eiji struggles with his depression.
> 
> 'Here Comes The Rain Again' - Eurythmics, 1983

He received several items of mail from America over the next few weeks. First came one from Sing, a package which had a sympathy card inside signed by several of the Chinatowners, as well as a letter offering his condolences and some happy updates to try and cheer him up. There were also some homemade peanut cookies from Nadia and a selection of Chinese sweets with a little note saying ‘even life has sweetness among the bitterness’. Nadia had also included a white origami flower with another little note saying that both flowers and paper were a common Chinese condolence gift to give, so she had killed two thoughtful birds with one stone. She said he should burn it to honour his father, and he felt a little guilty that he had never given her anything for Shorter. So much had happened that it had slipped his mind, but it wasn’t like he knew her all that well either, and Ash had been avoiding Chinatown. Sing had put a crumpled dollar in a white envelope inside the card too, saying he knew it wasn’t much good to him in Japan and it wasn’t really enough for a funeral gift anyway, but it was tradition. It was pointless sending any more than $1 because he wouldn’t be able to use it, but maybe he could imagine it was a wad of yen. Eiji couldn’t help but smile, laughing a little, remembering the similar token he had sent him for Lao.

He got another package from Alex with several candy bars and bags of American snacks. There was another card that the whole gang had scrawled their well-wishes in. A further card had been tucked inside with ‘Love Black Sabbath’ printed in block capitals on the envelope, and a card signed by Cain on behalf of his people within. A couple of the more eager kids had included letters and drawings; Bones had practically written him a novel, again with handwriting that was hard to read. What he could decipher told him that Bones still missed hanging out with him, and that he thought **‘Drunk Eiji is fun Eiji, so you should get drunk, drown those sorrows, and be happy! No cry!’**

Lastly, two cards arrived together in a plain white envelope, likely to save on postage. One, a generic one with a photo of an English church on it, was from Max, Jessica, and little Michael, wishing him well and offering sympathy. Ibe must have told them, or else… He turned his attention to the other one, a slightly more heartfelt one with a poem printed in it and a close up of some white lilies. The inside was blank, no indication at all of who had sent it. Eiji was confused for a moment. Had Max made a mistake? Had two cards from a pack gotten stuck together? Sympathy cards generally aren’t sold in multiple like Christmas cards are… He examined the neat handwriting of the address on the envelope, realising with a start that it wasn’t Max’s scruffy journalist penmanship, and it was too familiar to him to be Jessica’s.

Which meant it was _his._

He ran a hand gently over the script on the envelope, not sure if he felt happy to have received any correspondence from him at all, or angry that all he had deemed fit to send was a blank card. Clearly, he knew his address, and he knew what was going on in his life, and yet still no word from him, no letters, no phone calls, nothing. He sat the card on his desk with the others, trying not to think too hard about things.

_‘He has his reasons for keeping away, although I wish he wouldn’t… At least he’s thinking about me… That’s something. He still cares, although apparently not enough to even sign a card with his name!’_

He sighed, glancing at the clock. 14.43. Time to go to work again. 

***

The first piece of good news arrived in the mail in early May, with Osaka University of Arts accepting him for their course the following year. He had more than ample qualifications to apply; his previous college had provided good references for his diligence and drive, he had taken art in high school and received a fair grade, and his CV outlining his years as a photographer’s assistant held him in good stead. They had taken into account his circumstances, and Setsuka herself had put in a good word for him, as had Ibe. It gave him a year to work to earn money for his course, and a placement would be kept open for him to start study in the spring of 1988. It should have been cause to celebrate, and his Mother tried her best to make a big deal out of his achievement, buying a load of meat and, despite the warming weather, making a sukiyaki hotpot for the three of them to eat together, but Eiji’s heart really wasn’t in it.

He was happy that at least one thing in his life had gone right, but there was still a hole in his heart where his Dad had once been, made all the deeper by the absence of a certain blonde-haired yankee, and he still questioned whether he had made the right decision. He always worried about whether what he was doing was for the best. Was it really necessary to study? The short answer was yes; people hold qualifications in high regard, so a poor artist with a degree could be viewed upon as ‘better’ than a good artist with no qualifications at all, and this mindset was not unique to Japan. Universities provided you with contacts and career advice, plus they gave you a chance to experiment with your personal style in a safe environment with no risks of losing clients or money. There were personal reasons too. He was already a good photographer. You didn’t necessarily need qualifications for photography. He could always continue following Ibe and pick up the trade that way, but if he did that there was the risk he would never get out of the older man’s shadow. He wanted to spread his own wings, and the quickest way to do that was with college.

He would also be starting college the same time as his sister. She had started searching for places with a good geography course. Not being a mature student like himself, however, she would have to pass her exams and go through the usual mass applications to get herself a place. Her visitations were limited to open days, but she’d pretty much made up her mind that she wanted to go to Kobe University if she got the grades to study earth sciences. Her backup, like Eiji’s had been, was Shimane U, which would put her in the Matsue campus. Kobe was well placed for her to come and annoy the shit out of him regularly, or ‘visit’ as she called it.

“Someone has to come cheer you up occasionally,” she told him, showing him the Kobe prospectus one evening. “This place is in Kansai too, so I can just get the train up and come bother you!” She seemed to have bounced back after her father’s death a lot better than Eiji had, her mood returning to its old bubbly self with a frightening ease. She’d actually apologised to him for the things she’d said too; now her mind was clearer, and she’d had some time to think and consider her words, she understood that some of the things she had told him had been uncalled for. “I knew damn well you were upset as well, and you were organising all the funeral by yourself and trying to keep a clear head… I was just frustrated. You seemed so unemotional but… Ei-nii… you’re not acting yourself again and that’s really worrying.”

The problem was, the damage from the words had already been made. Eiji didn’t blame her at all for his current state of mind though; he’d been thinking exactly the same things himself. Many other thoughts were weighing heavy on his heart too, intrusive and glum, chasing their way around his brain in a merry-go-round of what-ifs and should-haves. 

“I’m fine, Kaori,” he lied.

“You’re acting just like you did after your accident…”

“No, I’m not,” he denied. “That time I was wallowing in self-pity. I just… I miss Dad, alright? I was abroad all that time… part of me regrets that. I had no idea he’d gotten so bad while I was away. Then I was the last one from home to see him alive and it has been tough saying goodbye.”

“It’s been rough for all of us, Ei-nii,” she said sagely, giving him a hug. “I’m sorry.”

“I think I hate the word ‘sayonara',” he said, hugging her back and accepting her apology, but he still didn’t cry.

He wished he could.


	23. That's What Friends Are For

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> His boss, Shuura, takes him out for drinks in an attempt to cheer him up.
> 
> 'That's What Friends Are For' - Dionne Warwick, 1985

When you have depression, it feels like every day merges into one long mess. The days appear long, and yet they fly by in the blink of an eye. You get up, you go about your daily business, which seems to be the same thing over and over every single day, you go to bed again. Repeat until the sweet release of death or some life changing event that lifts your mood, whichever comes first. Eiji volunteered to do more hours at work, knowing he needed the money, but also finding the days went quicker when he was there keeping busy. He’d plaster on a false smile for the customers and would chat with his regulars like nothing was wrong, but his change in mood was not missed by the other members of staff, particularly Shuura.

“Ei-kun,” she beckoned him into her office one day. “Can I have a minute?”

Eiji felt his stomach sink; generally, your boss calling you in for a chat means trouble. Had he done something wrong? What? He’d done everything he was asked exactly as he was shown, and he couldn’t recall having been unpleasant to any customers… “You wanted to talk to me, Shuura-san?”

“Don’t look so worried, you’re not in trouble,” she said, seeing the pale expression on his face. “It’s just… I remembered we haven’t formally taken you out for drinks yet!”

Japanese businesses often engage in social drinking, or ‘Nomikai’, to strengthen bonds within the workplace and celebrate big events like public holidays, birthdays, welcoming new starters, retirements, or achieving a business goal. Generally, it is associated with office staff, and while not compulsory it is frowned upon if you don’t attend. Eiji hadn’t expected to find that culture in a part-time convenience store, especially seeing as half the staff were under-age.

“Shuura-san… aren’t most of the staff under 20?”

“Yep,” she said, grinning, “Which is why it’ll just be you and me!”

“Shuura-san…”

“You can’t say no – you say no and I’ll cut your overtime!”

“That’s blackmail!”

“Just come for a drink with me, Ei-kun,” she said dismissively. “As your senpai, I’ll treat you!”

Just like that, he was tied into going drinking with Shuura in a pokey little Izakaya on a hot July evening.

Eiji had never been much of a drinker. He’d had beer in America, finding himself of age over there (although they had apparently recently raised the age to 21 - not that it mattered, he would still be of age now, and the street kids drank while underage anyway), but after a couple of cans he’d be feeling buzzed and would stop. He didn’t really enjoy the feeling of being out of control and clumsy, although the floaty feeling like you’re invincible and on top of the world was pretty addictive.

_‘Ash tended to drink light too… although really he shouldn’t have been drinking at all! I think Golzine used to force him to drink when he was younger… maybe he hates that lack of control too?’_

Shuura had trapped him in a corner of the izakaya so there was no escape, and she kept refilling his beer every time it was less than half-full, encouraging him to drink. Their conversation started light and casual, Shuura asking him about his future plans in more detail and chatting about what her boyfriend had been doing lately. He could feel the alcohol taking effect, further anesthetising his already numb emotions. Now not only did he not feel anything, he didn’t really care either. The world started to sway and tilt, like he was on a boat in a swell, and he found it harder to focus his vision.

“So, Ei-kun,” Shuura said, getting serious, “Tell me about America!”

“America?” he slurred.

“Yeah! I wanna know all about that street gang you joined!”

“I never joined ‘em… I jus’ got stuck with ‘em, is all,” he said. “Ash wouldn’ let me join.”

“Ash?”

“Remem’er I said my bes’ friend was a boss?” he said with a slight smile. “Tha’s Ash. He’s the boss. They did wha’ he said ‘cause he was smart.”

“You gotta be smart to be a boss,” she agreed, remembering her time in the Crimson Doves. “Strong too.”

“He was strong alrigh’… stronger than me, anyway. I’m not strong at all…”

“Sure you are, Ei-kun! You’re one of the strongest people I know! That’s why I’m concerned about you lately – since your old man passed away, you’ve not been yourself…”

“Izzat why you brough’ me here?”

“Partly,” she admitted, swirling her drink around in the glass, “But I also just want to get to know my employee a little better.”

“You’re very nice, but I’m not interested,” Eiji said bluntly, misinterpreting her. “An' you have a boyfriend.”

“No Ei-kun – not like that! Just as a friend!”

“Oh. Well, tha’s okay then! I like you as a friend very much!” he giggled. "Didn' you say you don' go to work to make friends?"

“Jeez, you’re a lightweight,” she smirked. “But it’s nice to see you smiling again.”

“I smile all’a time, Shuura-san!” Eiji said. “Ash said I was like the sun, always beamin’ and stuff. He said I was too bright.”

“He said that, did he?” That’s not typically the sort of thing one guy says to another, she thought, as she took a sip of her beer. Eiji certainly had brightened while he was talking about him too. Was he, maybe…? 

“I miss him…”

“Does he not write at all?” she asked, genuinely curious. At that question, Eiji’s face dropped. Any good mood he had been building up into vanished like a light switch being flipped.

“No. He doesn’ write or call or nothin’,” he slurred miserably. “He has his reasons. But I write to Sing and Alex and the other’s - they're other people I know ou' there - so I know he’s doin' fine and they’re all fine too and tha’s good…”

“Reasons?” Whatever reasons they were, they were not good enough, Shuura decided. If anyone was dumb enough to cut Eiji willingly out of their lives, then they didn’t deserve him.

“He’s a strange boy,” Eiji said cryptically, not elaborating on his reasons, “I understand why he’s ghostin' me, but doesn’ mean I like it.” He downed his beer, slamming the glass on the table. “Shuura-san, I feel weird…”

“Yeah, I think maybe I gave you too much,” she admitted. “Ei-kun – you’re drunk!”

“Being really drunk is no’ as fun as I thought it would be,” he murmured. “I thought it made you feel better?”

“Not always.”

“I wish I could go back to New York…” he mumbled, crossing his arms on the table and laying his head on top of them like a pillow.

“I won’t let you – not when you’re my best employee!” she joked. “I need you here!”

“It’s nice to be useful,” he sniffed. “I wasn’t much use in America, although I did try.”

“You’re plenty useful in my eyes, Ei-kun,” she said. “I’d have been proud to have you in my gang, if we weren’t all girls.”

“Thanks.”

Eiji wouldn’t say much else about America. When pushed, he clammed up or changed the topic, but she did deduce that he had been in mortal danger several times, and was maybe staying silent to protect himself and others. Her plan to cheer him up by drinking fell flat on its face, but Shuura still learned several things about Eiji that night. She was now fairly certain he was gay, or at the very least not all straight. It didn’t sound like he’d been dating, but whoever this Ash person was he was a lucky guy. He was also a fool… she kind-of hoped that maybe one day she could meet him herself, just to see what all the fuss was about. Plus, she wanted to give him a little bit of advice: This boy is special and he needs you, so don’t fuck with him.

Fuck with him, and you’ll have ‘Aki Taka no Shuura’ - Red Hawk Shuura - coming for you, all talons bared.


	24. Don't Let It Get You Down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eiji begins to move on with his life. He still struggles, but he finally starts to engage in things he enjoys again.
> 
> 'Don't Let It Get You Down' - Michael Jackson, 1984

Summertime came scorching, hot and sticky and humid, cicadas singing loudly through the sunny August afternoons. Sat in front of an electric desk fan in his room, T-shirt sticking unpleasantly to his back with sweat, Eiji was sorting through his photographs from America. He figured it might be good to start some portfolios, standing him in good stead for his professional future. Not all of his photos had been of Ash and the gang; he’d taken pictures of colourful skies above the New York skyline, interesting pieces of architecture, feral animals co-habiting the urban jungle and sweeping landscapes from high vantage points. He grouped them together by type; building photography here, wildlife photography there, candid shots of people on the street laying bare their humanity for all to see filling an entire album by itself.

He hadn’t realised exactly how many pictures of Ash he’d taken until he organised the photos formally. Sure, he had several on his pinboard, but they barely scratched the surface. Now he’d gotten all his reels developed, he could finally see the scale of his obsession. He made a separate pile of just Ash-photos, and it was at least four times larger than any of the others. As well as the embarrassing half-dressed ones and relaxed behind-closed-doors shots, he’d also got a couple of him in the library, studying quietly, some of him showing him warily around his city, and some of him interacting with his gang. His favourite shot was of him sat in the window at dawn, one leg bent, sunbeams catching his blonde hair and making it look like it was on fire. He looked so peaceful and enigmatic in that photo, his eyes soft, a slight smile on his face as he greeted the early morning rays.

It had been 10 months since he left America, and he had still yet to hear anything from Ash. It was starting to look more and more likely that he may never hear from him again. He still had no idea what his address was – Ibe had meant to get Max’s home address for him, but kept forgetting to ask. Just as frustrating was that the titbits of information he could eke out of his other American friends were so vague and non-committal he may as well have heard absolutely nothing anyway. Sing had stopped mentioning Ash in his letters, so he suspected the little Chinese boss had all but lost contact with the elusive Lynx, or at least didn’t socialise with him often enough to warrant a mention, and he hadn’t had any more care packages from Alex and the others since his Dad’s funeral, although he had sent letters back to them all thanking them for their kindness. He kept telling himself that he’d go hunt Ash down when he could apply for a visa again, but realistically that could be awkward and impractical. A lot can happen over a length of time that great; Ash may find someone else, or move away, or even forget all about him. That last option physically hurt, so he tried not to even consider it; he’d never forget Ash, so it was unlikely Ash would forget him either. He thought what they had was special, but it wasn’t for the first time that he wondered if it was possible that only he saw their relationship that way. It had taken him returning home to realise exactly how strong his feelings had been.

 _‘I’ll give him a year,’_ he told himself. _‘He has until October, and then while I’ll still always be there for him if he wants me to be, and I’ll always believe in him, I’ll stop upsetting myself waiting for him to call or write. I’ll follow his wishes and stay out of his life.’_

It was probably reflective of his current state of mind that he was considering letting Ash go, rather than an actual promise. A part of him would always be with Ash even if they never heard from each other again. Besides, Ash technically -had- contacted him with that blank sympathy card, so he was clearly keeping tabs on Eiji, same as Eiji was him. Someone who didn’t care wouldn’t do that. Also, due to his turbulent upbringing, Ash’s social skills were a little unconventional anyway, which meant that while his silence was inadvertently hurtful, Eiji still trusted that he had his best interests at heart.

He remembered sadly what had happened to most of his Japanese friends. They had all drifted away and moved on without him in their lives, and he sensed that the same thing might happen to his American friends with time too. That idea made him feel incredibly alone, the thought that friends come and go, can flit through your life like a brief light in the darkness, only to be snuffed out by distance and time. He was lucky in that he tended to make friends easily, and would likely befriend some college kids with relative ease, but that thought brought him little comfort, especially when the niggling thought that, after college, he could potentially lose those friends as well, haunted the darker parts of his mind like a spectre. It made you wonder what the point was, or if maybe there was something wrong or annoying with him that stopped people sticking around once he was no longer a daily fixture in their lives. Friendships were hard work to maintain, fragile and temperamental. They can fray and break with simple words and disagreements, and they can fade and erase themselves if you make no effort to maintain the connection. They can be one-sided and fickle too, all the affection one way.

Right now, he missed the friends he already had and didn’t want to lose them, especially after all they’d been through. It would be so much easier if he could just go back to America, but he was trapped. He sighed, looking at a photo of Alex with Ash, the two of them staring at the camera, Bones photobombing in the background with Kong. Feeling low, he dropped it back on the Ash pile, and started collecting the photos up in their respective groupings in separate A4 boxes. He piled the boxes up in the footwell under his desk, each one labelled in marker pen with what types of photos were inside. Feeling antsy and needing something to distract himself, he picked up his camera off the desk, checking how much film he had left.

_‘Almost a full reel, and I have two spares…’_

He always felt calmer with a camera in his hands.

_‘If I jump on the local train, I could go to Kofun no Oka Kososhi. The weather’s nice, and they have those ancient ruins there. The English Garden and Doei Temple aren’t too far away either…’_

He glanced at the clock, seeing he had most of the afternoon left to kill, before making a decision.

Packing up his camera into a shoulder bag along with a drink and his wallet, he walked out the front door and down the road with determination to the station. For the first time in several weeks, he was going to go out and take some photos.

***

At the start of September, Ibe called him.

“Hey Ei-chan! How are things in Izumo?”

“You sound very chipper, Ibe-san,” he’d replied, smiling at his voice. “What fun adventures do you have planned this time?”

“Well, I was thinking it was time I came down to Shimane to check out the lantern festival.”

“Oh, the one in Matsue?”

“Yeah, the one at the castle. I hear it’s very beautiful.”

“It’s worth a visit,” Eiji told him. “I go with my sister every year – the only exception was when I was in New York with you. You’d get some lovely photos there.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” Ibe said. You could practically hear his head bobbing up and down in agreement over the phone. “I was hoping I could double up with the drum festival too. Didn’t you used to be a drum bearer?”

“When I was a kid, yeah,” he replied. “My cousins are bearers this year. It’ll be Yuuki’s first time too – he’s pretty excited about it!”

“I would be too, if I were him.”

“Let me guess, Ibe-san. You want to stay here again?”

“If that’s alright with your mother?”

“Heh, she’ll be thrilled.” His mother would love any excuse to flirt with a younger man. It wasn't just Ibe she tried it on with. Generally these days, Eiji ignored her. “You just coming for the weekend or longer?”

“Probably a week, if that’s alright?”

“Yeah, stay as long as you like – it’ll be nice to have another guy around for a while.”

“Well, I’m sure you’ll have fun.”

Something in the way he said that piqued Eiji’s interest. The wording seemed a little weird…

_‘’You’ll’ have fun…? What about Ibe-san? Won’t he also have fun?’_

“Ibe-san, what are you hiding?” he asked him curiously, leaning against the wall with the phone.

“Nothing much – just a little something I’m bringing down with me that I think you’ll like.”

Sounds like Ibe had a present for him. It was probably a new camera or a lens or something, maybe something he could use at university.

“Well, now I’m dying to see it,” Eiji told him. “What is it?”

“That would spoil the surprise,” Ibe said cryptically. “You’ll just have to wait until next month to find out!”

Ibe gave Eiji some dates to visit, starting a couple of days before the festivals and running over the weekend into the following week. Looking at his roster, Eiji would be at work for about half the days Ibe was visiting, but he could still hang out with him in the evenings and he was free for the festivals. Ibe tended to bring a hire car with him these days so he could go and explore further afield, so he’d likely vanish for a few hours by himself while he worked.

 _‘Should be a good time,’_ he thought.


	25. Wind Beneath My Wings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reunion :)
> 
> 'Wind Beneath My Wings' - Bette Middler, 1988.

Eiji finished dressing the futon in the guest room, stuffing the pillows into fresh white cases and flipping a cover over a comforter. He knocked his glasses askew with the fabric, straightening then in annoyance with his right hand. He tended to wear his glasses now when he was dossing around at home with no plans to go out; they were more comfortable than his contacts, and half the time he just couldn’t be bothered with poking himself in the eye every morning. He folded the bedlinen neatly and piled it on top of the futon, ready for it to be unfurled and used later. Ibe would be here very shortly; his train had been due into Izumo about half-hour ago, so it was likely he’d be here within the next ten minutes. He had just closed the door on the guest room when the doorbell rang.

_‘Speak of the devil…’_

He descended the stairs to answer the door, calling out to his mother in the kitchen as he went.

“Mum, I think Ibe-san is here!” He shouted, thudding down the last few stairs and striding up to the entryway. “Either that or the postman.”

He opened the door and immediately froze. His mind went blank, all thoughts swept away as if a sudden centrifugal force sent them flying. It wasn’t Shunichi Ibe at the door.

Neither was it the postman.

An attractive blonde foreigner was there, taller than him but short in comparison to most westerners, his hair cut in a choppy, boyish mullet style with floppy bangs that hung like lopsided curtains over his face. He was slim, dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt sized just that slight bit too big for him so they hung off his willowy frame, hiding it from leery eyes behind a protective layer of baggy fabric. A denim jacket over the top of his shirt kept the worst of the October chill at bay, the battered and scuffed edge of a reading glasses case poking out of one of the front pockets. Bright green eyes stared at him with a mixture of guilt, anxiety, sadness, and longing. He raised one of his hands nervously in greeting.

<“Hi,”> he said in that familiar deep voice of his.

Eiji involuntarily squeaked, a noise somewhere between a squeal and a sob falling from his mouth. He couldn’t stop himself – he barely dared to breathe lest this be a cruel hallucination. He raised a hand to his mouth in shock, thousands of emotions swirling inside him, overwhelming him. He was shaking as tears welled up in his eyes and cascaded down his cheeks like waterfalls, the first to fall for months. Through blurred vision he double and triple checked that what he was seeing was real.

_‘How…?’_

He launched himself at the foreigner, latching on in a tight hug around his chest. The blonde man stiffened slightly, an automatic reaction to being embraced, but he instantly relaxed. Face buried in his clavicle, Eiji cried openly, drinking in that comforting scent he knew so well but had all but forgotten: the faint vellichor of old books, the slightest whiff of silicon oil used to clean and lubricate firearms, and something undefinably sweet, like cinnamon, he seemed to naturally exude.

“Whydidn’tyouwrite?” he mumbled incoherently, forgetting that Ash maybe wouldn’t understand his words. “Ithoughtsayonarawasforever…”

_‘English… speak English!’_

<“Yeah, I missed you too,”> Ash Lynx said quietly in English, returning his hug with one of his own.

<”You taller…”> Eiji sobbed, remembering his words. Ash had experienced a final growth spurt of roughly an inch right at the end of puberty and Eiji, who hadn’t grown at all, noticed it. He was also… cuddlier? He was certainly less bony than before without being overweight. He’d fleshed out a little in places where before he had been all but skeletal, and he practically glowed with health. <”You no look as thin!”>

<”You calling me fat, Eiji?”> he said in a haughty tone. Eiji couldn’t tell for sure if he was joking or actually offended; it had been a while since he’d dealt with American sarcasm, but he was pretty sure Ash was just taunting him. <”I come all this way and the first thing you do is tell me I’m chubby!”>

Eiji clung on to him tightly, apologising through his grip as he fisted at the fabric on his back, keeping him close and preventing him leaving again. <”No! That not what I mean! I mean… you look healthy. You always looked too skinny… I worried a lot that you no eat right...”>

<“I know what you meant, you dolt,”> Ash told him fondly, his hands warm and firm and comforting on his back as he held him. <“You’re looking pretty good yourself. Told you glasses would suit you! You look cute!”>

Eiji knew that was a lie. Glasses made him look like a childish dweeb, but he guessed that at the right angle to the right person a childish dweeb would look kind-of cute… Ash always looked super attractive in his glasses. Thin-framed and oval-shaped, they made him look sophisticated, older than he was, and they softened the harshness that sometimes haunted his bottle-green eyes. 

<“I never expected… I thought maybe you hate me. I hear nothing. For whole year, I hear nothing,”> he sobbed, simultaneously overjoyed at seeing him and angry at him for all but abandoning him. <“I about gave up on ever hearing from you again. No letter, no call… it hurt! I know you OK because of Sing and Ibe-san. They tell me, but they not say much. Even Alex write! He send letters from Kong and Bones and everyone… but no hear from you at all! Now you here! Why?”>

”Letter hard to write. No know what say. I was learning Japanese so could use right words,” Ash whispered into his ear in Japanese. His American accent was incredibly strong, his syntaxes confused and his pronunciation rough around the edges, but he definitely spoke Nihongo. Eiji wasn’t sure if he was hearing him correctly or not, but Ash continued to confidently speak Japanese in that weird, stilted way, so it wasn’t his ears tricking him. ”It took longer than thought it would.”

Eiji broke the hug, holding Ash in front of him by his shoulders as he stared at him, speechless for a minute. He was trying to decide if Ash was tricking him or not. Anyone could learn a sentence or two and parrot them back, but that didn’t necessarily mean he spoke Japanese fluently. Eiji, for instance, could say ‘Hello, how are you, do you speak Japanese?’ in about five different languages, but the only two he was fluent in were his native tongue and, for all intents and purposes anyway, English. Tentatively, he tested Ash’s skill, speaking slowly and clearly as he wiped his eyes dry and re-adjusted his glasses, which had been knocked askew again.

“What on Earth for? I can read and speak English just fine. You didn’t need to learn another language just for me!”

“Could debate English fine. Did not seem fair, all conversations one way,” Ash replied in Japanese, smirking in that cocky, know-it-all way of his. Seems he wasn't lying about having learnt his language. ”I now finally understand moody Eiji backtalk, and can talk to Eiji family.”

Eiji snorted at his wording. Ash’s understanding was good, but he had a long way to go before he sounded even remotely close to a native. Remembering how he used to tease him all the time for his accent and manner of speech, he decided it was well overdue time for some payback. ”’Eiji family’? What? Jeez, your accent is fucking awful! You sound like a toddler with a lisp.”

<“So is yours,”> Ash teased, switching back to English. <“We’re even!”>

He had missed this, the good-natured back and forth banter and bickering. Ash had a knack for annoying you, but in a way that was somehow endearing. He couldn’t stop smiling.

”Japanese is hard for foreigners, so I’ll let you off – the effort is appreciated,” Eiji told him, chucking. ”I can’t believe you… I don’t think I’ll ever understand even half the things that go through your head! Next time… just… send a letter or something, like a normal person!”

”Hopefully there no be next time,” Ash said. <“I’m here now.”>

**(Continued in ‘Heart Of A Broken Story – Chapter 17)**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so concludes Eiji's turbulent year. He has almost as bad a time back home as he did in America... but everything comes good in the end, and while his emotions may have faltered, he never truly gave up on Ash.
> 
> I’ll admit, this was written as a self indulgence fic more than anything. I wanted to explore Eiji’s family a little more, and show the harsh juxtaposition between his life and Ash’s. Eiji put a lot of pressure on himself when he was younger, and has a lot of insecurities which I wanted to try and incorporate as well. 
> 
> All the chapter titles are 80s songs, because why not. Ash gets a literature theme, so I gave Eiji music. The title song, 'So Far Away', is by the Dire Straits from their 'Brothers in Arms' album, and is about someone missing and feeling depressed about an absent love who is too far away for them to be with. I highly recommend it - the whole album really (my fave song on it is 'Money for Nothing')
> 
> Irony is I finished posting this on International Men's Day - a day that doesn't so much celebrate the achievements of men (like Women's Day does for ladies) but instead highlights the less talked-about issues that plague men, like depression and anxiety, as well as male illnesses and abuse. 
> 
> Things of note: The gang start writing to him less frequently when Ash tells them he is learning Japanese and planning to visit. Some of this is so they don't accidentally spill the beans, and they planned to contact him again after Ash visited. Sing, however, does write every couple of weeks, and he and Eiji are pen-pals. Sing has less to do with Ash than the others do though; unlike Shorter, he and Ash are not big buddies, and since Ash left the street they only really run into each other in passing. They respect each other, and have let bygones be bygones, but Ash tends to avoid Chinatown now because of the memories tied to it. I stopped including Sing's letters when they stopped being productive to the plot. Assume they become saccharine friendship things of two pen-pals describing what they have done that week.
> 
> We never find out Eiji's parents' names. This is because Eiji knows them as 'Mum and Dad', same as Kaori, and everyone else of interest refers to them both as 'Okumura-san' or 'Eiji's mother/father'. They never get introduced to us any other way. 
> 
> The latter half of the story seems to rush through summer quickly, but this simulates what depression is like. Every day is the same, a struggle in the dark where nothing much really happens. You lose interest in life, and some people cope by throwing themselves into work. This is what Eiji did. He starts to recover by the end, but it takes Ash coming back into his life to really bring him out of the slump. 
> 
> The Hiroshima trip was heavily influenced by a trip I made there myself several years ago. In the Peace Museum, I did the exact same thing I had Ibe do, and had to stop taking pictures. That place is really solemn, and gets you thinking. I was due to go back there this month, but... 2020 happened. 
> 
> And I felt Shuura needed a predatory-animal gang name too, so she is Red Hawk Shuura of the Crimson Doves :D
> 
> I hope you enjoyed my second major fic in the 'Heart of a Broken Story' series. I plan to do several more one-shots in the same alternative ending universe, so keep an eye out. 
> 
> Also... the word count for both this AND Heart soothes my OCD... unintentional rounded numbers *drool*
> 
> Thanks for reading :)


End file.
